Oral Answers to Questions

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

The Secretary of State was asked—

Fair Trade

Anne Picking: What action his Department is taking to support fair terms of trade for developing countries.

Gareth Thomas: The UK Government are committed to achieving fairer trade rules and removing barriers to trade. We are working for an outcome to the World Trade Organisation round that delivers on the ambition of the Doha development agenda, which for the first time puts developing country concerns at the heart of the WTO process.

Anne Picking: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. It is relevant that on Make Poverty History day we have questions on international development. Will he join me in congratulating the people of East Lothian, who have worked extremely hard to raise money for the disaster of the tsunami and for the fair trade movement? In particular, the people of East Lothian have worked hard for the people of Africa, who suffer plight and poverty every day.

Gareth Thomas: I take this opportunity to join my hon. Friend in congratulating not only the people of East Lothian on their work in fundraising for the tsunami, but the people of Britain in general. All Members will recognise the fantastic response to the tsunami appeal.
	I share my hon. Friend's view that the Make Poverty History campaign is generating considerable interest in the UK, across Europe and throughout the wider developed world. That interest will continue to be important in helping to secure a much fairer trading system as we approach the Hong Kong ministerial meeting, at which it is hoped we will get fairer trade rules agreed as a result of the WTO round.

John Redwood: What progress are the Government making with agricultural reform? Does the Minister agree that to make progress in this important area on the day of the great campaign, we need fundamental reform of the common agricultural policy so that developing countries have a chance to sell us their products?

Gareth Thomas: I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will be the first to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on her successful negotiations on the CAP in June 2003, which for the first time began to break the link between production and subsidies. That has enabled the EU to offer to end export subsidies. We hope that the EU's commitment will help to achieve similar commitments and similar outcomes from other developed countries and, as a result, help to get an agreement at the Hong Kong ministerial meeting in December.

Julia Drown: There are serious concerns for developing countries that economic partnership agreements are being negotiated, forcing developing countries to liberalise their markets in a way that will put real pressure on the poorest people and the poorest farms in those countries. What is my hon. Friend doing to ensure that the voice of poor countries is heard properly and that poverty is given the central focus in terms of renegotiations on trade?

Gareth Thomas: Our ambition for economic partnership agreements is that they are tools to promote development. Commissioner Mandelson has reaffirmed before the Select Committee in this place that the EU has no commercial interest in economic partnership agreements. My hon. Friend will be aware that negotiations have just started on what EPAs will look like in practice. We are continuing to work with African, Caribbean and Pacific countries and the European Commission to ensure that EPAs achieve their objective of being pro-development and pro-reform.

Julian Brazier: On Make Poverty History day, will the Minister say whether he is really happy with the generalised system of preferences plus document that we will be discussing in Committee tomorrow? Does he realise that this means that for many poor countries there will be access to EU markets only if they sign up to 27 treaties, many of them very expensive? Will he consider the concerns of Oxfam and other organisations that this could turn into protectionism through the back door against some of the world's poorest countries?

Gareth Thomas: I welcome the reform of the GSPs. A number of developing countries that were hard hit by the tsunami asked for further assistance in helping them with trade negotiations. The GSPs reform provides an opportunity to do so. We continue to talk to Oxfam and a range of other non-governmental organisations with an interest in fairer trading rules. We are continuing to work with them. We are continuing to work with ACP country Governments, as well as other least developing countries, to get a fairer set of trading rules, in particular in the run-up to the Hong Kong ministerial conference.

Chris Ruane: What assessment has my hon. Friend made of the all-party campaign to cut the subsidies to the richest 2 per cent. of farmers in the EU, which are currently £10 billion a year, to £5 billion, and to ring-fence that funding for the poorest countries in the world in southern Africa?

Gareth Thomas: I welcome the all-party campaign, as it directs attention to trade-distorting subsidies not only within the European Union but in many other countries. Many west and central African cotton producers are prevented from selling their products at competitive prices in the EU and US markets because of those huge subsidies. The fact that the EU has offered to end its export subsidies is an important signal of its intention to produce a fairer set of trading rules this year at the Hong Kong ministerial conference, and we need to urge other countries, such as our friends in America, to follow its example.

Africa (Multinational Aid)

Simon Hughes: If he will make a statement on the proposals for a multinational aid plan for Africa.

Hilary Benn: If Africa is to prosper it needs peace and stability, good governance, a doubling of aid through progress in reaching the United Nations 0.7 per cent. target and through the international finance facility, 100 per cent. multilateral debt relief and fairer trade rules. The Government are pressing for action on all those fronts, and the recommendations from the Commission for Africa will be published on Friday.

Simon Hughes: The Secretary of State will know that colleagues on both sides of the House and I fully support a Government initiative that some have called the new Marshall plan for Africa. Specifically, what role does he expect the United States of America to play, and what role does he expect the European Union and its member states to play?

Hilary Benn: The single most important step that the EU could take would be to agree a new aid target to which its member states are prepared to commit, so that they can help development in Africa and other developing countries around the world. That process has begun in discussions between Development Ministers in the General Affairs and External Relations Council, and Louis Michel, the new Commissioner, will make a proposal. If the United States of America, the other G8 countries and, indeed, all donor countries, accept the argument that a doubling of aid for Africa and other measures are required, they must consider what their contribution will be to creating a different prospect for the next generation in Africa.

Tom Clarke: I thank my right hon. Friend not just for his responses today but for his excellent work in seeking to make poverty history. On HIV/AIDS, will he continue to work with Nelson Mandela and others to ensure that that terrible scourge, which arises from poverty, does indeed become history?

Hilary Benn: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for raising the matter of HIV and AIDS, not least because today we are co-hosting a conference in London with the French Government, Ambassador Randall Tobias, the US global AIDS co-ordinator, and Peter Piot of UNAIDS. It aims to ensure that the money that we have already raised in the fight against AIDS is used to the best effect so that we can bring care, support, treatment and anti-retroviral drugs to people who are suffering from this terrible epidemic. At the same time, by doubling aid to Africa and increasing aid to other developing countries we can raise the additional finance that we need to turn that expression of the world's support into help for people in the communities where they live. With treatment, more doctors, more nursing, more testing and more counselling we can help to keep more people alive, avoid millions of human tragedies and help to provide an opportunity for developing countries to grow and prosper. Without such an opportunity they will not relieve poverty.

Tom Brake: The success of the Marshall plan for Africa will depend to a great extent on the additional funds from the international finance facility, yet there are great concerns about the way in which it will operate. Louis Michel, the EU Development and Humanitarian Aid Commissioner, set out his concerns in a letter to me, in which he said he was anxious about its governance,
	"the way its resources would be allocated and spent, and perhaps most importantly, the danger it might pose to aid flows after 2015—when repayments to the IFF would exceed its disbursements"
	to developing countries. Does the Secretary of State wish to reconsider his response to me on 15 December 2004, when he said bluntly that he would not consider alternatives to the IFF? Will he agree to liaise with Treasury officials, who are looking at alternatives set out in, for instance, the Landau report?

Hilary Benn: No, I do not take back a single word, because as countries increase their aid programmes to reach the 0.7 per cent. UN target we face a challenge. We now have the timetable that the Chancellor announced last summer. We have 10 years to go until 2015, but we cannot wait until then because it would be too late to raise the necessary finance to deliver increased aid and join the battle against HIV and AIDS, get more children into school, and employ more doctors and nurses. The question for the House and every country is how we raise the additional finance for development today. The international finance facility now has support from France, Germany, Italy and, most significantly in one sense, Sweden, which announced just over a month ago its willingness to participate in the pilot project with GAVI—the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation—which we think could raise an additional $4 billion and save an extra 5 million lives over the next 10 years. If not, the international finance—

Mr. Speaker: Order. May I ask the Minister to keep the answers shorter?

Helen Jackson: I commend my right hon. Friend for the work that he and the Chancellor of the Exchequer have done to promote the international finance facility, and particularly for the fact that it is gaining ground in the European Community. Does he agree that it is the duty of every party in the United Kingdom to come in behind the international finance facility, so that every party and every country in the European Union and the G8 across the world will back it and we can make a real difference during this year?

Hilary Benn: In deference to your strictures, Mr. Speaker, I shall just say that I agree with every word of my hon. Friend.

Alan Duncan: If we are to have a successful international aid plan, is it not better to have agreement not just between donor countries, but within those countries? We published our plans today, which include—the right hon. Gentleman will recognise the terms—increasing aid spending by £800 million, working towards the 0.7 per cent. target, focusing on the poorest, promoting good government, championing freer and fairer trade, and delivering faster and deeper debt relief. I believe in establishing a broad, honest cross-party consensus so that the United Kingdom can unite in action to address the challenges of global poverty. Will the Secretary of State confirm that he—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Let the spokesman for the Opposition speak. It is bad manners to interrupt him—very bad manners.

Alan Duncan: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
	Perhaps we can now hear whether the Secretary of State will confirm that he, too, will join in that cross-party consensus so that together we can all focus on the challenges of global poverty.

Hilary Benn: I am all in favour of focusing on the challenge of global poverty and I welcome support from every quarter. There are promises and commitments that people and parties make, and there are things that Governments actually do. If people look at the Government's record, they will see that we have not just promised to increase development assistance and to do all the things I outlined—we are actually doing them. That is the choice that people face.

Alan Duncan: Perhaps the Secretary of State can steal a phrase from his own manifesto and look forward, not back, and desist from deceitful party fundraising, asking for party donations on the ground that we would cut spending, which is patently untrue. It is obtaining money by deception.
	Bad government is the enemy of good aid. In addition to greater donor activity, there need to be African solutions to African problems. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the Commission for Africa will deliver results only if it requires each and all of the participant African countries to subscribe to a collective commitment to govern well? Without good governance the Commission for Africa will not succeed. Does the Secretary of State agree?

Hilary Benn: I agree, of course, that if all the commitments that Africa has entered into and all the recommendations of the Commission for Africa are not fulfilled, we will not make progress. I am very much in favour of looking forward. One of the reasons why I do not want to look back is that I do not want to go back to the 18 years when the hon. Gentleman's party cut the aid budget.

Millennium Development Goals

Chris McCafferty: If he will make a statement on the millennium development goals review in September 2005 in relation to sexual and reproductive health targets.

Hilary Benn: The millennium project report emphasises the importance of reproductive health and rights if we are to achieve the millennium development goals. Access to reproductive health is identified in the Sachs report as one of the "quick wins" for speeding up efforts to reduce poverty. We are working with others, including the European Union, to ensure that these strong messages on reproductive health are reflected both in the Secretary-General's report due in March and in the summit outcome document.

Chris McCafferty: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the millennium project taskforce report on child and maternal health and gender equality? It suggests a new target for universal access to reproductive health care by 2015 to help pull people out of poverty.

Hilary Benn: I am aware of that report. May I pay tribute to the all-party group on population, development and reproductive health, which has published a report, "The Missing Link!", that makes the link between the fight against HIV/AIDS and the importance of sexual and reproductive health? Around the world, 120 million couples do not use contraception, despite their express desire to plan how many children they will have. It is important that we give couples access to information to allow them to determine their own fertility.

Jenny Tonge: I am glad that the Secretary of State appreciates and understands the link between good reproductive health and AIDS, which is such a scourge. He knows that the withdrawal of funds by the United States of America from the United Nations Population Fund has caused the loss of programmes across the developing world and diminished the prevention of AIDS and other diseases in those countries. What will he do to persuade the USA to resume its funding to UNFPA?

Hilary Benn: We have already done the most useful thing that we can do, which was to increase our funding to UNFPA, of which the UK is a strong supporter, by, if I remember rightly, an additional £10 million last year. UNFPA does vital and valuable work, and it deserves support from across the world.

Africa (Tuberculosis)

Paddy Tipping: What support he is giving to programmes to combat tuberculosis in Africa.

Gareth Thomas: The UK is a key donor to the global fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria, to which we have pledged some $280 million through to 2008. More than 60 per cent. of global fund grants go to Africa, and some $245 million has been committed for TB. We also fund the global stop TB partnership, support the global TB drug facility and have spent more than £1.5 billion on strengthening health systems, so that better care, including for those with TB, is provided.

Paddy Tipping: Does the Minister accept that there is a serious crisis in Africa, where around 10 million people are co-infected with HIV and TB? TB cases are rising by 4 per cent. a year in Africa, but in parts of the region only one in three have a full course of TB drugs. Will that issue be raised at the G7 summit?

Gareth Thomas: My hon. Friend is right to issue that warning. If TB controls are not strengthened, we estimate that an extra 1 billion people will be infected with TB between now and 2020, that more than 150 million people will get sick, and that some 36 million people will die. G8 countries and EU countries undoubtedly have a role to play in providing more funding for the global fund. We will host the global fund replenishment conference in September, when we will hold discussions with all those countries on further funding.

Michael Fabricant: Is the Minister aware that every second of every day in the year, someone new is infected with the TB bacillus, which now infects one third of the planet? Given the spread of TB in Africa, does he agree that it is important to eradicate TB in Africa not only for Africans' sake, but because it is in our interests, given the movement of people between Africa and the UK?

Gareth Thomas: I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we must do more to fight TB. We must be aware of the strong links between TB infection and the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced the doubling of our funding to the global fund last year and why we want to host the global fund replenishment conference in September.

Multinational Aid

Alan Simpson: If he will make representations that no economic policy conditions be attached to aid from multinational donors, with particular reference to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Hilary Benn: The UK's new policy document, "Partnerships for poverty reduction: rethinking conditionality", states that we will no longer seek to impose policy choices upon partner Governments, including in relation to sensitive areas such as privatisation and trade liberalisation, as part of our aid programme. The World Bank and the IMF are both undertaking reviews of their approach to conditionality this year, and I will work to persuade those institutions only to support programmes which are agreed, rather than imposed.

Alan Simpson: The Secretary of State will know that developing nations are telling us that the hidden privatisation requirements that attach to debt relief programmes are making poverty worse rather than better. Can he tell the House whether he and other Ministers, in their roles in relation to the World Bank and the IMF, have ever made formal proposals that those conditions be dropped, and whether we are now dropping our partnership with the Adam Smith Institute, which has a vested interest in ensuring that privatisation is built into our programmes?

Hilary Benn: Indeed, at last year's annual meeting we did persuade the World Bank to undertake the review of conditionality that is now occurring, and I look forward to seeing its outcome. The point about privatisation—it is important that we recognise this—is that it in some cases it might be the right route to take, while in some cases it might not. My view is that that decision should be taken by developing countries themselves. Tanzania and Ghana have invited in the private sector to help to deal with the problem of getting more clean water to more people. That is where the decision should be taken, not by us as aid donors and not by the World Bank, and that is what I am trying to achieve.

Tony Baldry: In his document, the Secretary of State says, among other things, that we need to find a more effective way to strengthen countries' policy expertise. Will he consider seconding DFID officials to those countries where we now give aid mostly through budget support, in order to help them and their Governments to work up policy more effectively and to increase their capacity? DFID has more fast-stream civil servants than any other Department in Whitehall; perhaps they could be shared with some of the countries to which we give aid. [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Before the Secretary of State replies, may I ask hon. Members to be quiet?

Hilary Benn: The hon. Gentleman raises an extremely important point. In fact, we already do a great deal in that regard through the technical assistance that we give, including the use of consultants to work with developing country Governments, at their request, to build the kind of capacity that he describes. Without that, we will not enable them to be in a position to take certain decisions and to know what their consequences will be. I undertake to reflect further on his suggestion, although, as he knows, a lot of dialogue already takes place between DFID civil servants with the relevant expertise in the developing country partners with which we work.

Ann McKechin: My right hon. Friend will be aware of the international parliamentary petition which has gained support from more than 280 parliamentarians here at Westminster and which calls for greater accountability of the World Bank and the IMF. Does he agree that those institutions need to engage more, not only with Ministers but with the elected representatives of Parliaments in the developing nations?

Hilary Benn: I do agree, although it is ultimately for developing countries themselves to decide to what extent their parliamentarians and public participate in the process of drawing up their own poverty reduction plans, and there should be nothing in what we do as donors that prevents that process from happening. I would positively encourage it, because a plan that does not have the support of Parliament and the people is less likely to be successful in making progress on reducing poverty.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Andrew Selous: What steps the Government are taking to encourage good governance in sub-Saharan Africa; and if he will make a statement.

Hilary Benn: As part of most of our activities in Africa, we work with Governments and civil society to tackle corruption, strengthen the means of democracy and build states that are accountable to their people. We also support the African-led peer review mechanism, which reviews country performance in governance and development. Peer reviews are already under way in Mauritius, Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda, and the first two should be completed by this summer.

Andrew Selous: Does the Secretary of State agree—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is entitled to be heard.

Andrew Selous: Does the Secretary of State agree that if we are, rightly, to make poverty history in Africa and elsewhere, good governance is indispensable; and that African leaders' side of the bargain is to push for peaceful democratic change and to say clearly that corruption and money laundering are as unacceptable in Africa as anywhere else?

Hilary Benn: I agree entirely, because corruption gets in the way of promoting economic development and investment. Recently, I was in Zambia, which is taking a strong lead in the fight against corruption. I applaud that and the British Government are supporting that lead.

Islamic Relief

Tony Cunningham: If he will make a statement on his Department's work with Islamic Relief.

Gareth Thomas: We have worked in partnership with Islamic Relief since 1994, supporting long-term development projects as well as relief operations in several countries including Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Mali.

Tony Cunningham: I pay tribute to the Department's work with different faith groups, but what are the Government doing to help the Muslim community in Kashmir?

Gareth Thomas: I take the opportunity to pay tribute to the work of Islamic Relief in particular, and all faith groups that work in developing countries.
	To answer my hon. Friend's specific question, we are funding Islamic Relief for a £1 million health programme in the Neelum valley in Pakistan, thus helping 40,000 people to get access to basic health care.

PRIME MINISTER

The Prime Minister was asked—

Engagements

Alan Reid: If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 9 March.

Tony Blair: This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues. In addition to my duties in the House, I will have further such meetings later today.

Alan Reid: Is the Prime Minister aware that the average house price on the Isle of Mull has soared to £125,000, thus forcing many local people out of the housing market and into caravans and chalets? That is typical of many rural parts of the country. The Prime Minister could help by adopting the fully costed Liberal Democrat policy of abolishing stamp duty on houses that cost less than £150,000. Will the Prime Minister help people in rural areas such as Mull by adopting that policy?

Tony Blair: First, of course it is true that house prices have increased in the hon. Gentleman's constituency and in constituencies throughout the country. We have an immensely strong economy under the Government, with low inflation, low mortgage rates and low unemployment. However, it is important that we continue with the investment that we are making in public services.
	We have looked carefully at the Liberal Democrats' spending plans, especially their plan to get £30 billion off top-rate taxpayers by raising the top rate of tax from 40 per cent. to 50 per cent. and introducing a local income tax. However, having looked at them, we decided to reject them.

Kevin McNamara: At the weekend, my right hon. Friend welcomed statements by the leaders of Sinn Fein that they would help to bring Mr. McCartney's murderers to justice. Does he share the horror and contempt that the rest of the community in these islands feel at statements by the IRA yesterday that it was prepared to assassinate the murderers of Mr. McCartney but not prepared to bring them to justice? When my right hon. Friend next meets the leaders of Provisional Sinn Fein or has any contact with them through No. 10, will he clearly bring it to their attention that there is nowhere in these islands where we can have parallel police forces, kangaroo courts or assassinations of people whom we do not particularly like?

Tony Blair: I agree totally with my hon. Friend. From someone who has always been prepared to speak up for the nationalist community in Northern Ireland, his words are especially telling. I make it absolutely clear that the IRA's statement yesterday defies description. It was extraordinary and cannot be justified in any shape or form. There is no way that we can make any progress in Northern Ireland that includes Sinn Fein unless there is a complete end to violence of whatever kind.

Michael Howard: Today, the House will debate the Prevention of Terrorism Bill. It is important that we all understand its scope. At the weekend, the Prime Minister said that its provisions could be used against protesters against the G8 meeting in Scotland. Did he mean that?

Tony Blair: I have read that I am supposed to have said that, but I confess that I have absolutely no recollection of saying it. There are people who want to protest against the G8 meeting—incidentally, protests happen on a very wide range of issues, and I obviously see many of them on my travels around the place—but the control orders are specifically designed to defeat terrorism. For people who want to come and protest in this country, there is a long-standing democratic right and they are perfectly entitled to do so.

Michael Howard: I have the newspaper report here. The Prime Minister was asked—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Michael Howard: The Prime Minister was asked—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. I want silence when the right hon. and learned Gentleman is addressing the House.

Michael Howard: The Prime Minister was asked whether the Home Secretary would use the new anti-terror laws against G8 protesters, and he replied,
	"I couldn't rule it out."
	So what on earth was he on about?

Tony Blair: I will have to check whatever transcript there is. Let me make it absolutely clear that, of course, these terror laws are not to be used against protesters. They are to be used against people suspected of terrorism. Let us get back to the central question at the heart of the terrorism legislation. The reason that we are introducing it has nothing to do with people making protests; it is because the police and the security services are advising us that they need these control orders and, what is more, need them to be applied in circumstances in which there is reasonable suspicion that people are engaged in planning or plotting terrorist acts. We have made a concession today on judicial scrutiny. As I said in this House, that is not the issue of principle. The issue of principle is having these control orders. I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman whether he will ensure that the Conservative party supports these proposals. They are right and they are necessary. This is the advice that we are being given by the security services and the police, and I believe that it would be irresponsible to flout it.

Michael Howard: Let us see where we are on the Bill. First, the Government said that there would be no concessions at all. Then they conceded that control orders on house arrests should be made by a judge. This week, they said that they would not extend that to the other control orders. Today, they have backtracked on that, too. Given the scale of the Prime Minister's defeat in the House of Lords yesterday, will he now reconsider his position on the sunset clause, so that Parliament can have a proper opportunity to consider the best response to the terrorist threat?

Tony Blair: No, I will not do that. It is correct. I think that I said in the House, and repeated at my monthly press conference, that judicial scrutiny was not the key point of principle. We have made a concession on that, and I hope that that will satisfy people. In the end, as I explained to the House, the question was whether we were able to ensure that the control orders could be used effectively by the police and security services. We have found a way of doing that. If necessary, the Home Secretary can apply the orders himself, in exceptional cases, otherwise, it has to go to the judge. I am afraid that we are not prepared to accept either the amendment on the sunset clause or the other amendment voted for by the House of Lords, and which the Conservatives in the House of Lords backed, to change the burden of proof. That would not be wise; it would be contrary to the strong advice given to us by our security services and our police, and I am simply not prepared to do it.
	It is perfectly obvious that this country faces a terrorist threat the like of which we have not faced before. The advice that is being given to me by our security services and police is clear: we need these control orders, and we need them on the basis of reasonable suspicion of engagement in planning or plotting terrorist activity. If I were to accept the suggestions that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is making, I would be doing so in contradiction of the express advice that I have received, and I will not do it.

Michael Howard: We all accept that there is a terrorist threat. The question is: what is the best way of dealing with it? We have just heard from the Prime Minister that what was a point of principle for him last week is no longer a point of principle for him this week. The question that I asked him was about the sunset clause, and he did not answer it. So what I want to know is: is he seriously saying that he would prefer to have no Bill at all than to have a Bill that would last for eight months so that Parliament could have a proper opportunity to consider the best response to the terrorist threat?

Tony Blair: First, let me correct the right hon. and learned Gentleman on one point. I thought that I had said the opposite—that the judicial scrutiny issue was not the point of principle. The point of principle is on the control orders and the burden of proof. In my view, what is important is to have the legislation that we believe will work. I do not agree with the sunset clause, for this simple reason: it is important that we send a clear signal now that this legislation is on the statute book and will remain on the statute book. I will simply say to him that his position, as I understand it, certainly from the position of his shadow Attorney-General, is that the Conservatives want the sunset clause so that they can return to the issue later and oppose control orders in principle. In my view, that would be completely wrong and would send out absolutely the wrong signal from the House.
	When the right hon. and learned Gentleman was Home Secretary, he dealt with issues such as exclusion orders under the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1989. We face today a terrorist threat that I would have thought is obvious to every Member of the House. The advice that we have is that we need these control orders in legislation. We can review the legislation annually, but it should not be subject to a sunset clause, as the Home Secretary has made clear. In particular, we cannot accept the burden of proof being different from that of reasonable suspicion. In the House of Lords yesterday, the Conservative Front Bench voted for a change to that burden of proof provision, too. For those reasons, we cannot accept his amendments. He will have to come to a decision, and so will the Conservative party, as to whether to accept the legislation. We have made concessions that we think are reasonable; we will not make those that are against the direct advice that we are receiving.

Michael Howard: If the Prime Minister thinks that it is only the Conservative Front Bench in the House of Lords that is opposed to the Bill, he is living on another planet. I did take action against terrorism when I was Home Secretary, and when we brought the prevention of terrorism legislation to this House, he opposed it. He opposed it even when the terrorist bombs of the IRA were raining down on Heathrow airport. We will therefore take no lessons from him about the need to be tough on terrorism.
	Is not this the position? We offered to extend the current powers of detention. The Prime Minister rejected that. We offered a sunset clause so that the legislation could be examined properly in eight months' time, and he has rejected that. Is he really saying that no Bill at all is better than a Bill for eight months? Where on earth is the logic in that?

Tony Blair: Where on earth is the logic in the right hon. and learned Gentleman's position, which is that we should put back in place part 4 of the previous legislation which was struck down by the House of Lords? Let me return once again to the central point: the House of Lords said that the previous legislation should not stand. It is important that we listen to that, and we have done so. That legislation expires on 14 March. We have brought forward legislation in accordance with the advice of the police and security services that it is necessary for the defeat of terrorism. We have done our level best to meet reasonable concerns. We are not going to meet the concerns that he has now put forward, because it would be irresponsible and wrong. Yes, we must take a position and stick to it, and we are doing so. When the legislation comes back, however, he will have to decide whether he will march the Conservative party into the No Lobby to vote against legislation that our security services and police advise is necessary for the protection of the citizens of this country. I believe, even if he does not, that national security comes first.

Michael Howard: The Government said a month ago that the existing Act
	"remains . . . valid, enforceable and effective"
	and that in
	"exercising the powers . . . the Secretary of State is . . . acting lawfully".
	That is what the Government said about the existing powers one month ago. We have said that we will co-operate with the Government in renewing those powers. We have said that we will co-operate with the Government if there is a sunset clause in the Bill. I have come to the conclusion that this Prime Minister wants this Bill to fail. He wants to pretend that he is the only one who is tough on terrorism. Is not it a dreadful measure from a desperate Prime Minister, and should he not be thoroughly ashamed of himself?

Tony Blair: We will have this debate here, and we will have this debate in the country, and we will see where the shame lies; but in my judgment the shame will lie with the Conservatives, who, faced with legislation to prevent terrorism—faced with legislation on which we were advised by our police and security services—are going to vote against it. If they want to vote against it, let them: we will be content ultimately to have the verdict of the country on it.

Meg Munn: I recently accompanied a team of special constables in my constituency on their Friday night duties. They did an excellent job in antisocial behaviour situations, and also in supporting the general police. There is, however, a possibility of confusion between special constables, community support officers, neighbourhood wardens and street rangers. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need to adopt the approach advocated in south Yorkshire, and develop local policing teams that bring together all who are working to achieve better neighbourhoods in our communities?

Tony Blair: Today we are announcing that we will establish community and neighbourhood policing teams across the country. We have a record number of police in the country today, and we also have community support officers. I believe that the vast majority of people now accept that those who opposed community support officers—as the Conservative party did—were wrong, and that what we need are dedicated teams combining the fully warranted officer with the community support officer and the neighbourhood warden. That will bring back visible community policing in this country, and I am sure that it will be supported by the overwhelming majority of people in this country.

Charles Kennedy: As the Prime Minister is acknowledging his climbdown over judicial scrutiny but saying that it was never an issue of principle, may I remind him that in our discussions three weeks ago both he and the Home Secretary made it very clear to us that the issue of principle for them was that the Executive, not the judge, should make the decision? It sounded very much like a decision of principle for the Government at that point.
	May I ask the Prime Minister again why he now cannot acknowledge the two outstanding issues of principle that could perhaps resolve the matter? The first is that it is the standard of proof that must be in the balance of probabilities, not just reasonable suspicion. The second is that, surely, an individual always has the right to know exactly what are the charges against him when his liberties are being withdrawn.

Tony Blair: I am afraid that, for the reasons I gave earlier, I do not accept the change to the burden of proof: I simply do not accept it. Again, the advice we have is absolutely clear—that it would be detrimental to our capacity to have powers that fall between the ability to survey people and the ability to prove a case beyond reasonable doubt. In our view, the burden of proof is necessary as it is.
	Let me repeat to the right hon. Gentleman and the House that we are debating these issues, as is often the case, in circumstances in which people are very properly concerned about civil liberties. Should any terrorist act occur, there will not be a debate about civil liberties; there will be a debate about the advice that the Government received, and about whether they followed it. I have the advice, and I intend to follow it.

Charles Kennedy: Surely the Prime Minister should not ignore the fact that the former Lord Chancellor, the former Master of the Rolls, the former Cabinet Secretary and the former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police do not agree with his arguments. I do not think that they can be dismissed as irresponsible voices in the land. These are people with broad-based experience. Surely it is time that the Prime Minister rediscovered his reverse gear—and is it not time that he began to put the fundamental liberties of the British people before his own political pride?

Tony Blair: The right hon. Gentleman asks whether I condemn the people whom he listed as irresponsible. Of course I do not: they genuinely take a different point of view. On the other hand, someone like Sir John Stevens agrees with the legislation. I am afraid that on any of these issues there will be conflicting views; the question is, what is the right thing to do?
	The right hon. Gentleman talked about the civil liberties of the subject. I think that the civil liberties of the subject are extremely important, but I think that there is one basic civil liberty, which is the right to life. I think that freedom from terrorism is the most important consideration, which must be uppermost in our minds. I am very sorry that the right hon. Gentleman cannot support us, but for those reasons we will have to present this legislation, and the House will then have to make up its mind.

Tam Dalyell: Are full texts of Law Officers' advice on matters of peace and war made available to the Cabinet as a whole, or just to the Prime Minister?

Tony Blair: It depends on whether the Attorney-General actually attends Cabinet. In the instance that is being raised in the newspapers this morning, the Attorney-General came to Cabinet and therefore gave an oral report on his advice.

Anne McIntosh: Does the Prime Minister recall saying in the 1997 general election campaign that we had 24 hours to save the health service? Hospital infections are spiralling out of control, and we now know that 500 people are dying each week from preventable blood clots. Do they also have the right to life?

Tony Blair: First, let me say to the hon. Lady that I believe that any reasonable person looking at the state of the health service today would say that considerable progress has been made; every single independent report shows that. Of course there will be cases showing that there are still things to do in our health service today, but I can tell her that when people in this country see the investment going into the health service, the new hospitals being built, the extra nurses and doctors, waiting lists and waiting times coming down, and cancer and cardiac deaths declining, and then compare that with the Conservatives' proposals to take money out of the health service and to subsidise private health care—[Interruption.] Oh, yes. They propose to subsidise private health care, so that only people who can afford to pay for half their operation get that help. When people see those two choices before them, they will know that it is just as well that they voted to save the health service.

Claire Ward: May I ask my right hon. Friend whether he can assure the people of Watford and its police service that the number of police community support officers will be increased? Although those whom we currently have in Watford town centre are very welcome, the people and residents are not seeing as much benefit as they would like, and they want the use of CSOs to be extended and the funding of current ones to continue. Can he give that assurance?

Tony Blair: I can assure my hon. Friend that 20,000 extra community support officers will be delivered if this Government are returned to office. That, of course, is in contrast to the Conservatives, who want to freeze the Home Office budget and would end up cutting the number of police officers—as, of course, the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) did. That investment in our police services, and in education and health—under this Government, at least—would continue.

Ian Paisley: Will the right hon. Gentleman take it from me that his condemnation of, and further exhortation to, the leaders of IRA-Sinn Fein is useless in Northern Ireland's present drastic and tragic circumstances? When is he going to take action? We have a statement from the IRA that is a statement of intent to murder. Those who made that statement and who mentioned in it people who can be identified are not even going to be called in for questioning, according to the Chief Constable. Surely intent to murder is a crime under the law and should be dealt with no matter who does it—be it Sinn Feiners or anyone else.

Tony Blair: Who is brought in and questioned and who is charged is obviously a matter for the Chief Constable; it is not a matter for me, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman accepts that. In respect of the IRA statement, I have made my condemnation absolutely clear and I would simply say that, over the past eight years, we have made considerable progress in Northern Ireland, although we now have an impasse as a result of the IRA's refusal to give up violent activity of whatever sort. But as a result of the process itself, that is the feeling now in Northern Ireland and also in the Republic of Ireland. I think that the benefits of the process are now clear. There is a stark choice facing republicanism: either embrace the democratic and peaceful route or be excluded from the political process. I hope that they realise that and I believe that the whole of the island of Ireland now does. It is now for the republicans to take the right decision.

Mike Hall: When I was at primary school, a boy in the year above me suddenly disappeared; his name was John Kilbride. It emerged a couple of years later that he had been snatched off Ashton market, tortured and murdered by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. Will my right hon. Friend give me an assurance that he has no intention of giving such people the vote?

Tony Blair: The current position in law is that convicted prisoners are not able to vote, and that will remain the position under this Government.

Ann Winterton: Cheshire dairy farmers are becoming increasingly anxious about the rising number of bovine tuberculosis cases and their resulting added costs, especially the slaughter of prime dairy cattle. Will the Prime Minister take urgent action to implement a strategic badger cull, which has proved successful in Ireland and is supported by 350 distinguished veterinary surgeons and scientists, with the objective of ensuring that the UK has both a healthy cattle and a healthy badger population?

Tony Blair: I understand the concerns that the hon. Lady raises. There are trials going on in Ireland, and we are studying them carefully. There will be a strategy on bovine TB and how best to deal with it. We are looking very carefully into the problem, but the question of whether culling is the right option has to be determined in the light of all the evidence and all the representations that we receive, including those of the hon. Lady, but also those that reached opposite conclusions.

Anne Campbell: Has my right hon. Friend had time to consider the implications of the proposals of some hon. Members that university students should live at home for the first two years of their degree course and go to university only in their final year?

Tony Blair: I have had the opportunity to consider those proposals, which emanate from Liberal Democrat Members, and I have to say that I entirely reject them. What we now have is a proposition that allows us to have our universities properly funded and allows students to go through university without paying tuition fees at the time, backed up by a fair system of repayment. That avoids both the need to force students to live at home and the need to impose real rates of interest on student loans, which is the Conservative party policy.

Elfyn Llwyd: In response to the Father of the House, the Prime Minister said that the question whether Cabinet colleagues were entitled to the full opinion of the Law Officer depended on certain circumstances. Will he now tell the House and the country why a written opinion is good enough for him, but only an oral opinion is right for the rest of the Cabinet?

Tony Blair: Let me elaborate on what I said earlier. The Attorney-General came to the Cabinet, gave his opinion in detail and was able to answer any queries that people raised about the matter. I really do not understand what is being said by the hon. Gentleman and others. If it is being said that the legal opinion of the Attorney-General was different from the Attorney-General's statement to the House, that is patently absurd. I would also point out to the hon. Gentleman and others that, as a result of evidence that has emerged subsequent to the Iraq war, it is perfectly obvious that there were indeed multiple breaches of UN resolutions—and it was on the basis of breaches of UN resolutions that we went to war.

Jeff Ennis: Does my right hon. Friend recall my Adjournment debate, entitled "Airgun Safety", of 23 June 1999? I called for tighter controls on airguns and raised the possibility of introducing a licensing system for them. In the light of the tragic death from an airgun wound of two-year-old Andrew Morton in Glasgow last week, does my right hon. Friend agree that that is a policy that we must shortly revisit?

Tony Blair: First, let me once again express my profound condolences—I am sure that I speak for the whole House—to the family of the young person who was so tragically and wickedly killed. As the First Minister in Scotland said, now is not the moment to rush into new legislation. We must carefully consider any lessons from it, and we will do so. Obviously, if we do legislate, we must ensure that we do so in a sensible way. I know that my hon. Friend would want us to study the lessons carefully. We will do that and then publish our conclusions.

Vincent Cable: Senior executives at my local hospitals tell me that, although they regret ward closures, poor hygiene and clinical negligence, they face no penalties for those failures, but that they face the sack if they fail to reduce their financial deficits. Will the Prime Minister clarify the primary and overriding duty of the chief executive of an NHS hospital?

Tony Blair: It is, of course, to assist in the provision of first-class health care and, of course, to make sure that hospitals live within their budgets. However, I am delighted to say that the investment made by this Government has led to a massive increase in health service spending in the hon. Gentleman's constituency, and in constituencies up and down the country. According to the statistics that I have for health care in Twickenham, there has been a real-terms increase in investment of more than 6 per cent. As a result, Richmond and Twickenham NHS Primary Care Trust receives £176 million in funding. Moreover, there are 2,700 more nurses and 700 more doctors, and waiting times and waiting lists have fallen. It seems to me that the health care system in his constituency is doing rather well—which is why people in the area will no doubt want to continue with a Labour Government.

Jane Griffiths: Does my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister welcome, as I do, the publication of the long awaited Bill on Crossrail? Will he congratulate colleagues in the Department for Transport on agreeing to consult on safeguarding the route to Reading? Does he look forward, as I do, to Crossrail becoming reality as soon as possible, so that London and its environs have the world-class, 21st century transport system that they deserve?

Tony Blair: Yes, I do.

Points of Order

Oliver Heald: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. There is obviously great interest in all parts of the House in the likely Government new clauses to the Prevention of Terrorism Bill. When are we likely to be able to see the groups of new clauses that you have selected for debate? Are you able to give us any further information about when those important items will be available?

Mr. Speaker: The Government new clauses are being printed as we speak. I hope that that helps the hon. Gentleman. My selection will take place as soon as I leave the Chair.

Clive Soley: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I understand the importance of the exchanges on the Floor of the House between the Opposition parties and the Government at Prime Minister's questions, but the first 20 minutes were occupied by the party leaders. Taking into account the smaller parties, that left only 10 minutes for Back-Bench Members. Will you give some thought to how we can ensure that Back Benchers are heard?

Mr. Speaker: I am the custodian of the rules of the House. There is no breach of rules in what the hon. Gentleman describes. If hon. Members wish to change the rules in that respect, they are more than welcome to try to do so.

Angus Robertson: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You may be aware that, according to credible sources in the north of Scotland, the Highland Regiment is to be deployed in Iraq this November. That will mean that personnel will be away from their homes and families over Christmas. Should not reports such as that be confirmed to the House before we have to read about them in newspapers?

Mr. Speaker: I have the highest regard for the Highland Regiment, and for all Scottish regiments, but I cannot be drawn into such matters.

Michael Fabricant: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Like you, I support the important campaign Make Poverty History, which is fully endorsed by both sides of the House. However, you will have noticed that a number of hon. Members are wearing arm bands today. If you cannot do so now, will you issue a statement later about the appropriate dress code for the Chamber?

Mr. Speaker: Hon. Members often wear badges supporting various organisations. No breach of the rules has taken place, so I cannot intervene. However, some hon. Members approached me beforehand about the wearing of arm bands. It is my preference that they should not wear them, but it is up to the individual.

Control of Identification Documents (Offences)

Chris McCafferty: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make it an offence for employers and certain other persons to destroy or control the identification documents of another person in specified circumstances; to amend the Diplomatic Privileges Act 1964 and the Consular Relations Act 1968 so as to make diplomatic and consular staff and their households liable in relation to that offence; and for connected purposes.
	The purpose of the Bill is to tackle a loophole in the law that has allowed many people, including criminals, to abuse others through human trafficking, domestic slavery, sexual exploitation and forced marriage. I am sure that hon. Members will be as surprised as I was to learn that it is not an offence under UK law to appropriate and keep someone else's passport. That should be illegal and someone found guilty of that crime should go to prison.
	The unauthorised holding of someone's passport or other identity documents is an important tool for the unscrupulous to control vulnerable people. It is well documented as a technique used in people trafficking, particularly when the individuals concerned are then exploited through poor employment or forced involvement in the sex industry. It is sometimes used by families to force unwanted marriages on young women.
	The Bill applies particularly to documents such as passports, immigration papers and driving licences, and to any official document that is necessary for someone to establish their identity. The Bill also amends rules relating to the rights of foreign diplomats in this country, so that they, too, will be covered by the offence. There have been a number of cases in which it was alleged that domestic staff working for foreign diplomats have been controlled and treated as virtual slaves through control of their identity documents. It is important to ensure that that cannot be excused under the cloak of diplomatic immunity.
	The number of people affected by this contemporary slavery has increased dramatically during the past decade. As a UK delegate to the Council of Europe, I have been involved in drafting amendments to the draft convention on the trafficking of human beings, and I welcome that convention. Trafficking results in abuse of the human rights of trafficked persons, including the right to life, liberty, dignity, freedom of movement, and freedom from slavery and slavery-like practices. Measures covering trafficking must have at their core the protection and respect of those rights. It is difficult accurately to identify individuals as trafficked persons, but it is important to do so promptly because of the risk to their lives and safety if we fail to do so. I welcome the draft convention, which ensures that the intentional, unauthorised retention, removal or destruction of another person's identity or travel documents for the purpose of enabling trafficking is criminalised.
	Last year was the United Nations year of the struggle against slavery and its abolition. It provided a valuable opportunity to remember those who have been victims of the slave trade and those who campaigned for its abolition. It also highlighted the fact that slavery has not yet been abolished. Millions of women, children and men are enslaved around the world, and no region is free from that abuse.
	Slavery today takes many forms—for example, bonded labourers, forced labour, trafficking in human beings, and forced marriage. A marriage can be said to be forced when at least one party does not give consent to it or when pressure is brought to bear. In the UK, that can occur in several ways. A young person may be lured abroad on a pretext; they may be imported or even bought by a UK citizen. According to the Home Office, those most at risk are young women between the ages of 13 and 30. A clear form of violence against women, forced marriage can also be a form of domestic slavery. It places women in a situation of total vulnerability, at the mercy of psychological, sexual or domestic violence, and the withholding of a passport is a common practice in such cases.
	Bonded labourers are often migrant workers who are not adequately protected against forced labour and exploitation here in the UK. We need look no further than the tragic incidents in Morecambe bay to see the power and ruthlessness of the gangmaster. A recent report by Kalayaan, a non-governmental organisation that campaigns for and supports migrant domestic workers, highlights how migrant workers' rights are inadequately protected under existing UK legislation. Kalayaan found that, on average, 49 per cent. of domestic workers registered with it—a total of 511 migrant workers between January 2001 and June 2003—had had their passports taken by their employers. The removal of a passport makes migrant workers vulnerable to deportation and allows employers to exert additional pressure on workers to accept bad pay and conditions. It also makes it impossible for them to access many services and entitlements. Despite that, there is no effective legislation in the UK that protects workers from having their passports withheld or that penalises employers for doing so.
	Article 21 of the 1990 UN convention on the protection of the rights of all migrant workers and members of their families stipulates that all migrant workers should have protection against the confiscation or destruction of their identity documents. Many migrant domestic workers, mostly women, are working in situations that constitute forced labour. For example, documents may be removed to coerce migrants into staying in a job or to accept exploitative conditions of work. It would seem, from the evidence provided by Kalayaan, that the right balance has not been struck, because many migrant domestic workers in the UK are reduced to being forced labourers, which is also a contemporary form of slavery.
	Professor Bridget Anderson, from Oxford university, in her comprehensive research on domestic slavery, found that many professional employers certainly do not see themselves as abusive or exploitative and would be the first to condemn trafficking in domestic workers, which they see as something that is done by others, not people like them, but some of the reasons those respectable people give for employing migrants, rather than citizens, to work in their homes are disturbing:
	"They're foreign, illegal and very, very small. They're absolutely terrified."
	"They're so desperate for work, they're not looking to get fired, they're looking to keep their job."
	"She's dependent for money, so it's a circle that works well, so that I can keep her."
	"The whole idea of getting a migrant worker is that you're not getting into paid maternity leave and that stuff."
	In this sector, as in many others, there is not a simple division, between those subject to forced labour and slavery, and happy, free, waged labourers. There is a continuum of exploitation and abuse, and it is in the grey area that most cases lie.
	As I said earlier, 2004 was the UN year of the struggle against slavery. It would be a fitting way to commemorate that struggle if the Government took steps to reduce the number of people who fall victim to trafficking and forced labour in the UK by supporting this Bill and ensuring that a law is put in place to make the withholding of identity documents illegal in the UK.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Chris McCafferty, Mrs. Betty Williams, Ms Diane Abbott, Geraldine Smith, Julie Morgan, Dr. Jenny Tonge, Mr. Mike Hancock, Ann Clwyd, Mrs. Alice Mahon, Mrs. Ann Cryer, Paul Flynn and Sandra Gidley.

Control of Identification Documents (Offences)

Chris McCafferty accordingly presented a Bill to make it an offence for employers and certain other persons to destroy or control the identification documents of another person in specified circumstances; to amend the Diplomatic Privileges Act 1964 and the Consular Relations Act 1968 so as to make diplomatic and consular staff and their households liable in relation to that offence; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 18 March, and to be printed [Bill 82].

ESTIMATES DAY
	 — 
	[2nd Allotted Day—1st Part]
	 — 
	SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, 2004–05
	 — 
	Future of the BBC

[Relevant documents: First Report from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Session 2004–05, HC 82-I and -II, on A Public BBC; The Government's response thereto, Cm 6474; The Department for Culture, Media and Sport Green Paper, Review of the BBC's Royal Charter; and The Department for Culture, Media and Sport Annual Report 2004, Cm 6220.]
	Motion made, and Question proposed,
	Department for Culture, Media and Sport
	That, for the year ending with 31st March 2005, for expenditure by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport—
	(1) further resources, not exceeding £63,523,000, be authorised for use as set out in HC 325,
	(2) a further sum, not exceeding £65,461,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund to meet the costs as so set out, and
	(3) limits as so set out be set on appropriations in aid.—[Mr. Jim Murphy.]

Gerald Kaufman: I am grateful for the opportunity to open this debate on the BBC and the report by the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport that was published on 16 December. I pay tribute to my colleagues on the Committee of all parties for the work that they have done, which has led to our producing a unanimous and consensual report. I also pay tribute to the Clerks and their staff for the work that they have done not only on the report but for the Committee throughout the year.
	We have a plethora of documents to consider when debating the BBC. We have the Select Committee report and the Secretary of State's reply to it. I am grateful that she published the reply at the same time as the Green Paper, which we are also considering. We can consider the documentation and the inquiries that are relevant to the charter review that have been conducted by the Office of Communications. We also have the documents from Lord Burns and the various inquiries conducted by Tim Gardam, Philip Graf and Professor Barwise. Indeed, it is impossible to count the number of trees that have died during the process of the charter review. I shall address the issues in a moment, but one argument for not having a charter review could be the ruinous impact that producing such documentation has on the landscape.
	I thank the Secretary of State not only for publishing her reply to the Committee report at the same time as her Green Paper last week, but because that Green Paper acknowledges the work of the Committee and, in whole or in part, accepts several of our recommendations, although not all of them, as I shall have cause to point out. I know that the United Kingdom Film Council is especially grateful that she accepted our recommendation on a film investment strategy.
	The background to both our report and charter renewal is the dramatic change in the audiovisual environment since the National Heritage Committee, which I chaired at the time, produced its report that led to the present 10-year charter and the continuation of the licence fee as the method of funding the BBC. It is remarkable that in 1998 not one single house in this country had digital television—all television signals were analogue—yet today more than half of all households have it. It is partly thanks to initiatives taken by Sky and the hugely imaginative launch of Freeview that the number of houses with digital television will increase almost exponentially. About 5 million houses have Freeview boxes at present, and it is thought that by the end of the year there may be 10 million. That will, among other things, lead us forward to the practicability of digital switch-off.
	The fact that we now have digital TV channels and, as the Secretary of State said in her statement last week, there are more than 400 television channels with more to come, has had a dramatic effect on the audience for the old analogue channels, which are also available on digital television. In 1993, BBC1 and what is now ITV1 had three quarters of the entire television audience in this country. The latest figures show that that three quarters has fallen to less than half, and figures published in the last few days show that ITV is continuing to lose its audience. In his memoirs, Greg Dyke interestingly points out that the only reason that BBC1 remains the channel with the largest number of viewers is not because it is doing well, but because ITV1 is doing even worse.
	We have also moved forward from a situation in which, ever since the foundation of the British Broadcasting Company in 1922, we have been used, as radio and television channels have increased, to every viewer having access to every channel. That is no longer the case and it will never be the case again.

David Cairns: A significant number of people in the country, including those in Inverkip in my constituency, cannot receive an analogue signal and have never been able to do so, and are thus forced to buy cable, if it is available, or satellite dishes. Given that the analogue switchover in Scotland will happen after the charter is renewed, will my right hon. Friend support my call for a simple principle to be included in the new charter—that if people cannot receive a television signal they should not have to pay the licence fee?

Gerald Kaufman: I do not think that I would go that far, much as I sympathise with my hon. Friend and his constituents. One of the things to which we refer in our report is the need to launch and expand the Freesat enterprise, so that, without subscribing to Sky, for those who do not want to do so, it will nevertheless be possible for most people to obtain digital TV, in the same way as many people—up to 10 million, it is thought—will be able to do through Freeview. I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) is in his place and I know of the difficulties in his constituency, but my point was reinforcing what I said earlier: the era when everybody had access to everything is gone permanently. It will never return.
	What is more, as the Select Committee found in its inquiries both in this country and abroad, and as the Green Paper points out, the situation to which we have been used ever since 1922—of people sitting in front of a radio or TV set and accepting, having to make do, with what is offered by those stations—is over, too. Through Sky Plus, HomeChoice and developments in the United States, people will be able to construct their own viewing in their own time, with their own choice, in a way that was never dreamed of even when the last charter review was taking place.

Chris Bryant: My right hon. Friend was saying that we lived in a time when every BBC service was available to everyone. That was theoretically true, although as my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns) pointed out it is not entirely true in his constituency. In fact, when BBC2 first broadcast, large parts of the country were unable to receive it. Precisely the same parts of the country still cannot receive Freeview, so there is considerable anger in constituencies such as mine. People say that as they pay the same licence fee they should get exactly the same deal. Can my right hon. Friend see any way to insert in the charter a greater impetus for the BBC to ensure that it provides the same deal to every constituency in the land?

Gerald Kaufman: When BBC2 was launched nobody could get it, because it broke down on the opening night. The production of "Kiss Me, Kate", the main programme on the opening night and to which I was greatly looking forward to watching, had to be postponed until the next night. The point that my hon. Friend makes, like the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns) a moment ago, is very valid indeed. If we are to have a new BBC charter, and if it is to be based on universal access, I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will pay careful heed to those of my hon. Friends who live in areas that do not have the access available to people such as my constituents in Gorton who live in big cities. The interventions of my hon. Friends make the interesting point that viewers or would-be viewers consider access to programmes and channels as their right. That is appropriate.
	We are moving towards a situation in which, despite the rather obtuse recommendations in Professor Barwise's report on digital TV, more and more channels are niche channels. Even BBC1—with less than a quarter of the viewers still the biggest channel in the country—is becoming a niche channel, too. Special interest channels are important; for example, Artsworld and Performance, which I understand has difficulties—I hope they can be solved. As the Green Paper points out, there is little of interest on either BBC1 or BBC2 before 7 pm; the arts are almost gone from BBC1 and "Panorama" has been banished to late on Sunday evenings.
	It is important to note that people go on about the BBC as though it had been carried down from Sinai by Moses on tablets of stone and there is something holy about it that applies to no other broadcasting organisation. In the end though, as Alfred Hitchcock said to Ingrid Bergman when she was complaining about the interpretation of her role, "It's only a movie, Ingrid". In the same way, in the end, the BBC is only a broadcasting organisation—very important though broadcasting organisations are, and particularly important as the BBC is.
	Although it emerges from the material that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has published that the idea of public service broadcasting originated in the United States, nevertheless the embodiment of public service broadcasting is the BBC. We would not use that phrase as we do if the BBC did not exist. When one listens to excellent broadcasting organisations in other parts of the world—for example, CBC in Canada—one can hear or see the influence of the BBC and Lord Reith on what was, when it was developed in the United States, first in radio and then in television, simply a mechanism for selling goods and attracting listeners and viewers through programmes that would get people to listen to or watch the commercials.

Lembit �pik: I find the right hon. Gentleman's comments very interesting. As he points out, the BBC is not some sort of holy organisation or religious sect, but does he agree that its circumstances and the licence funding arrangement, as he rightly describes them, enables it to be a world-class exemplar for public service broadcasting? Does he also agree that it seems encouraging that the Government have taken on board the important link between the current method of funding the BBC and the direct beneficial consequences on its ability to focus on top-class programming, rather than on ratings or advertising?

Gerald Kaufman: I agree with what the hon. Gentleman says, although I will come to one or two issues that relate to the funding in a moment. There is absolutely no doubt whatever that, if the BBC contributed nothing else to our national life and to international life, its contribution, even under the dumbed-down era of the previous director-general, is incomparable: five symphony orchestras, which we simply would not have in this country without the BBCincluding, if I may be territorial, the BBC Philharmonic in Manchesterand the proms. All right, the BBC inherited the proms from Henry Wood, but it continues them.
	I will just make one self-indulgent pointit may well be the only self-indulgent point that I make in my contribution. [Hon. Members: No, no. More] Well, if I am urged, I might expand. Although I am a great admirer of the BBC's contribution to this country's cultureindeed, I have not referred to what I personally believe to be the best of the BBC's television channels, BBC 4nevertheless, I am using, or perhaps misusing, this moment in my speech to beg Roger Wright, the controller of Radio 3, to get rid of the constant chattering and gibbering that we hear on Radio 3 every morning. There is a presenter, as I understand they have to be called, called Sandy Burnett, who sounds like the gibbering of a demented parakeet, and I very much hope that Roger Wright, in accepting the tribute that I pay to what Radio 3 can be at its best, will get rid of that awful chattering, the requests for e-mails and the other nonsense on what ought to be the most estimable radio channel in the world.

Patrick McLoughlin: The right hon. Gentleman's experience in this sector is renowned, but does he agree that the amount of time that the BBC uses to promote its digital channels increases the anger of all those people who cannot receive themthey are paying for something that they cannot receive, but they have no option about whether they pay for itand that, if the roll-out of the digital channels is slower than expected, their anger will grow?

Gerald Kaufman: The hon. Gentleman is right, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport refers several times in her Green Paper to the anger that is created by cross-promotion in BBC programmes. One need not be a critic of the BBC to be concerned about the way in which the BBC is deteriorating in several respects, particularly when viewers and listeners rely to such an extent on the BBC for information, art, entertainment and news.

Dave Watts: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Gerald Kaufman: I will give way, but may I remind my hon. Friend that this is only a three-hour debate and other hon. Members will wish to speak? So, if I can be forgiven, this will be the last time that I give way in my speech.

Dave Watts: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. Does he agree that many hon. Membersfor example, those who represent the north-westare very concerned about dumbing down and the reduction in regional programming and news? Has the BBC not got an obligation to show a greater commitment to regional programming and regional news?

Gerald Kaufman: I agree with my hon. Friend, and of course, there is a very good chance that that can be rectified when the BBC moves to what it calls its hub in Manchester. I cannot think of any cityor, indeed, any locality in the entire countryto which it is more appropriate for the BBC move to try to deal with the concerns that my hon. Friend expresses.
	We who serve on the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport accept, as we did 10 years ago, that whatever concerns one has about the licence, it is the only viable way to fund a public BBC, but I would tell my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that we, like her, having accepted that the licence must continue, ask that certain matters that relate to it be rectified because the BBC is in the unique position of being the only collector of its own fundingthe only hypothecated tax in the country, and the only one collected by its recipient with rules laid down by the recipient. I am sure that every hon. Member will know of examples from her or his constituency of the anomalous regulations that relate to the licensing, or otherwise, of sheltered housing. When I had a certain problem in my constituency, I wrote to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. She referred me to the chairman of the BBC, who referred me back to my right hon. Friend. What we did not get in the end was a solution to the issue, and I am grateful to her for wanting to find one.
	I hope also that my right hon. Friend will move forward from what she says in her Green Paper about the penalty for not having a licence and accept in full our recommendation that failing to pay for a licence should be decriminalised and become a civil offence. All the statistics show that the predominant number of those who fail to pay for their licence are single mothers on low incomes, and turning them into criminals is not acceptable. Incidentally, to continue the ghastly campaign by the BBC, warning us in the most threatening Big Brother way that we will all become criminals if we do not pay for our licence is unacceptable. In my own case, I was sent a threatening letter, asking me why I had not paid my licence fee, when I pay it by direct debitthus showing that the way in which such matters are dealt with is not absolutely brilliant.
	Meanwhile, I hope that my right hon. Friend will consider adopting the recommendation that issuing fixed penalty notices may well be the best way to deal with those who fail to pay for their licence. When we were discussing my right hon. Friend's statement last week, I became conscious of the fact that there is a lot of support for the view that, although some of us have accepted with varying degrees of enthusiasm or reluctance that the licence is the most appropriate way to fund the BBC, we believe that it is the most appropriate way to fund only the BBC and that the recommendations made in several quarters to top-slice it to fund other public service broadcasting is just not acceptable. Our constituents will be just about ready to pay the licence fee to fund one major broadcasting organisation, but I do not believe that the use of the licence fee as a kitty to finance other ventures will be acceptable to the overwhelming majority of licence fee payers.
	I am very sorry that my right hon. Friend did not find it possible to accept our recommendation that the BBC should be placed on a statutory basis, rather than via a charter. I understand completely her concerns about any possibility of either Government or Parliament intervening in the workings of the BBC, but let us consider Channel 4, which has been a statutory organisation throughout its existencethrough the wisdom of Lord Whitelaw, who was responsible for its foundationas has S4C as well. Channel 4 has been, if one sets aside the Hutton episode, far more controversial during its existence than the BBC has ever been. It has a far more aggressive news programme than anything that the BBC screens or broadcasts, yet nobody has ever been concerned for a moment that Channel 4 would be subject to interference from the Government or from Parliament. I hope that before we get to the White Paper my right hon. Friend may be willing to reconsider the recommendation.
	One of the issues to which I have already referredmy right hon. Friend rightly devotes considerable space to it in the Green Paperis digital switchover. We are reaching a time when digital switchover, for most people, will not be a problem. People are moving towards reception of digital TV themselves, either by Sky, cable or Freeview. It is extremely important that nobody should be excluded from digital reception when the switchover takes place. The recommendation that we make in paragraph 3 of our report is that the Government should give
	serious consideration to the need for measures . . . to make digital switchover affordable and practical to people on low incomes and those with special needs.
	I do not believe that that has been given sufficient attention by my right hon. Friend in the Green Paper. I hope that as she moves towards the White Paper she will accept that it is an extremely important matter.
	Like a number of my hon. Friends who are in the Chamber, I represent a constituency with a good deal of deprivation, with many people living on benefits. That is through no fault of their own. It is extremely important that such people, often with young children, should not be excluded from TV reception when analogue is turned off.
	What my right hon. Friend sets out in the Green Paper with regard to governance, with more than a nod to the Committee's report, makes a great deal of sense, but with one exception. The exception is my concern at the idea of the chairman of the BBC being the chairman of what my right hon. Friend calls the BBC trust. The huge mess into which the BBC got itself under Mr. Davis and Mr. Dyke was due, to a considerable degree, to Mr. Davis defending, almost obsessively, the system of BBC governance. There was the notorious Sunday evening meeting, for example,
	Many of us who are delighted with the appointments of Michael Grade and Mark Thompson are worried that the Green Paper and the charter and agreement might be, as it were, fashioned in their image. We cannot always rely on such absolutely first-class people holding the two top positions in the BBC. Indeed, the people who they succeeded were very far from being absolutely top class, and that is me being kind and generous. Whatever my right hon. Friend fashions, I put to her that it should be in place to deal with the worst contingencies rather than leaving them to the albeit admirable people who now run the BBC. I am pleased that in the Green Paper my right hon. Friend accepts what we are saying in our report about the need for professionals who understand the media and business to be on the BBC trust. We have only to look at the antics of Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, who claimed to cause a fuss about the Hutton issue while at the same time going on the Today programme regularly to take sides on the Hutton issue, to realise how important it is that we get the right people.
	I hope that while my right hon. Friend pays attention to our recommendation that what she calls the trust should sit in public, she will decide that it ought to sit in public, as the Federal Communications Commission in the United States does, for example. In this country, in many public bodies, there is too much of a net curtains attitudethe idea that things are too important to be conducted in front of the children. The children in this case are the people who pay the licence fee and fund the BBC. I hope that my right hon. Friend will think about that tendency. I hope also that she will have another think about making the details of BBC finances available to the National Audit Office.
	In a curious way, all of uswith misgivings and with some disagreementshave reached a consensus about the future of the BBC. That is right because it is an exceptionally important broadcasting organisation. I hope that high as our opinion is of Michael Grade and Mr. Thompson, they will not be complacent in believing that all the problems are over. By the time that the White Paper is published, I hope that my right hon. Friend will have assuaged some of the misgivings that remain so that we can all go forward to support the BBC into the wholly digital age.

John Greenway: I am grateful to be called so early in the debate. It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), who introduced it.
	We are fortunate to have the BBC. It is arguably the most professional and respected broadcaster in the world. It has an unrivalled reputation for quality, with high quality programming not only on television but on radio, with its news and current affairs coverage and its coverage of the arts and music, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred. The promenade concerts constitute probably the greatest classical music festival in the world. Its coverage of sport is largely unrivalled. The best that anyone else can hope ever to claim is that its broadcasting is as good as that of the BBC. I am sure that the Secretary of State will agree that if we are fortunate in gaining the Olympics in 2012, the coverage of our broadcasters of that great event will, I am sure, show viewers throughout the world what we can do.
	We should be in no doubt that the BBC is one of our great national institutions. I believe that we have an interest and a responsibility in this place to secure it. The debate on which we are now embarked, which will last well into the next Parliament, enables us to discharge that obligation in a thorough way. We need to secure the BBC's future in what is already a vastly different broadcasting environment from the one in which it has flourished up to now. The right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton referred to that. The rapid growth of digital television has surprised many people who were sceptical about how quickly it would be developed.
	I have been lucky in my time in this place to have been able to be involved in a number of broadcasting debates and broadcasting Bills. I served on the Home Affairs Select Committee that, in 198889, published its own detailed report on the future of our broadcasting, which led to the White Paper, Choice and Diversity. I served on the Committee that considered the then Communications Bill with my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale)we represented the Opposition view on that Committee. I have been the secretary of the all-party media group for some time.
	I think that it is fair to say that the Select Committee report, on which the debate is based, has provided a good basis, in response to which the Government have published their Green Paper. I shall make a few initial remarks about the Green Paper. The title of the document, Review of the BBC's Royal Charter: A strong BBC, independent of government, is a welcome and worthwhile goal. As we begin to fathom through the proposals and try to come to a judgment on them, I think that we will want to assess how realistic is the ambition A strong BBC, independent of government.
	It will be difficult for the issues rightly flagged up in the Green Paper to be determined without Government intervention and without decisions being made ultimately by the Government. That is particularly true of funding. The funding review announced by the Secretary of State is welcome, but it will be conducted by the Government. As far as I can tell, if we keep the licence fee for a further 10 years or so, in the end it will be the Government who ask Parliament to agree to its cost. Similarly, whether we or the Labour party are in government, decisions must be made about governance, the handling of complaints, competition and digital switchover that will have a significant bearing on the future of the BBC. I welcome the objective of creating a strong BBC independent of Government, but it will be difficult to achieve completely.
	The licence fee is the issue that most troubles Members on both sides of the House. On cost, the bounds of acceptability have been under pressure for some time. A licence fee currently costs 121, but it was because people found it difficult to pay that the Government introduced free television licences for the over-75s. I am not sure whether it was a fortunate responsibility, but I was shadow spokesman on culture, media and sport when the Government, against the advice of the Select Committee, decided on an above-inflation increase in the licence fee. My hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth), the then shadow Secretary of State, and I argued against that increasenot because we wanted to vote against it, but because we wanted to have a debate about the issue. We said that the settlement was too generous, and many of our warnings have turned out to be true. In particular, we believed that the BBC would invest heavily in new digital channels that many viewers would be unable to access, as has been said in an intervention on the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton. It is difficult to see how that problem will be resolved, but until the digital switchover people will be peeved at having to pay a fee while they do not have the opportunity to watch those channels.

Don Foster: The hon. Gentleman rightly said that the issue has already been raised in our debate. For some people, Freeview is the way forward, but for others, even though they have to pay some money up front, Freesat is an option. However, that option is not available to everyone, because planning regulations may prevent them from putting up satellites. That has to be factored into the equation.

John Greenway: I am familiar with that problem in my constituency. It is not realistic to expect everyone in the country to put up a satellite dish.

Peter Atkinson: To reinforce that point, according to Ofcom, the Tyne Tees area is likely to be the last area to undergo the digital switchover, and that will probably happen in 2012. As a result, more than 10,000 of my constituents in Hexham and the Tyne valley cannot receive digital terrestrial television until then, which is hugely frustrating for a large number of people. Was my hon. Friend a little disappointed by the Government's one-paragraph response to the Select Committee report? It is vital that the BBC and other terrestrial broadcasters find a way around the problem and that there is a free-to-air satellite service apart from Sky's Freesat.

John Greenway: My hon. Friend makes his point extremely well. As part of my own constituency is in the Tyne Tees area, I am familiar with that problem, which is an example of the friction between the current licence fee and people's belief that they should be getting value for what they are paying. It does not matter whether hon. Members have individual views about whether 121 is good value for money. I think that it isI mentioned the promenade concerts, and it could be argued that 121 is an extremely good deal for more than 50 concerts on Radio 3 and television when we consider what we would have to pay for a subscription service.
	If we are to continue with the licence fee for at least 10 years, its sustainability will depend on the public's perception of value for money. I warmly welcome the Select Committee's consistent argument for setting the licence fee increase at the level of inflation, because the fee now exceeds the bounds of acceptability. Also, we are giving the BBC more money to expand broadcasting services, which the commercial sector is perfectly capable of doing. If we are to keep the licence fee it should be set at a realistic and fair level. Equally, we should continue to put pressure on collection costs. I share the view of a number of hon. Members about the heavy-handed nature of some of the BBC's collection practices, particularly towards people who do not have a television, as their declarations are not always believed.
	In the charter renewal and the general redefinition of the BBC's mission, we should ensure that there is a service that can be universally accessed and enjoyed. It should be valued, valuable, unique and of high quality, and should retain and sustain programmes and coverage of events that are important to our national life but which other broadcasters choose not to cover. In the past, we have had arguments with directors-general and chairmen of the board of governors about the ratings war, but we must accept that quality programmes should be popular and that people should want to watch them. That is a difficult balance to strike. We had an argument with Christopher Bland, when he was chairman of the board of governors, about the downgrading of Yesterday in Parliament. One of my colleagues said, But you have the licence fee, so you should not be concerned about the fact that people switch off and do something else at 8.45 am. That is what the licence fee is for.
	We want the BBC to do things that enrich our cultural diversity and allow innovation without it being constantly concerned about viewing figures or the size of the listening audience. While I am concerned that the licence fee may not last the 10-year period that the Government have in mindwe may have to look at alternatives before the end of that periodit is difficult to envisage an alternative, as the Government's consultation has demonstrated. People should feel that they are buying into the BBC through the licence fee and they should receive something that they value.

Michael Fabricant: This is a rather belated intervention, but as my hon. Friend mentioned Yesterday in Parliament, he may like to know that I have received an e-mail from the BBC that says that an Evening Standard diary column that claimed that the programme was to be scrapped was completely untrue and that it would continue in perpetuity. The last two words are my own, but nevertheless my hon. Friend will understand my gist.

John Greenway: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's piece of news. Someone suggested to me once that the reason why Members of Parliament like to hear Yesterday in Parliament is that we all like the sound of our own voices, which reminds me that having spoken for 14 minutesI know I have taken a few interventionsI should try to bring my remarks to a conclusion in two or three minutes.
	We all need to study the Green Paper carefully. I cannot tell the Secretary of State that I have read it from cover to cover, and I suspect that very few colleagues have yet had the chance to do that. There are issues of governance on which we will have views. I agree again with the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton on the need for a role for the National Audit Office, for which my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford and I pressed in the Standing Committee on the Communications Bill. I am not yet clear to what extent the trust will differ from the board of governors, but I am prepared to be convinced.
	I shall say a few words about independent production. During the proceedings on the Ofcom Bill, I was astonished at the strength of feeling against the BBC from some independent producers, to the point where some of them flatly refused to work with the BBC. We got the impression that the 25 per cent. target was a glass ceiling that some folk in the BBC would like to see lowered. My hon. Friend and I came to the conclusion that there probably ought not to be a limit at all, and that the BBC should be encouraged to commission significantly more than 25 per cent. of its output from independent producers. Some of the people now working in independent production companies are responsible for innovation and the development of new talent and new ideas, whereas when we had just the BBC and ITV, and there were no other opportunities, everything was done in-house.
	My final comment to the Secretary of State is that in the north we believe we have one of the great centres of excellence in television production in Yorkshire, in the area of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton. It is too early to say whether the outside the M25 definition that was in the Communications Bill is working entirely satisfactorily, but I hope that it is. I want to encourage as much production as possible to take place away from London for the simple reason that the BBC and commercial television generally, by sponsoring arts, educational programmes and a range of other activities, bring a great deal to our cultural life. Those of us who represent constituencies away from London hugely value it. We should not just preserve it, but seek to enhance it.

Kevin Brennan: I draw the attention of the House to my declaration in the Register of Members' Interests.
	I welcome the Green Paper, particularly the proposed continuation of the licence fee, which is the bedrock of funding for the BBC into the future, even with the radical changes taking place in the broadcasting sector. However, in the course of my remarks I shall express a couple of reservations, at the outset by echoing the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) about top-slicing and adding my concern about whether that will prove to be a sensible way to preserve public service broadcasting outside the walls of the BBC. I shall also say a little about the governance of the BBC, with particular reference to Wales.
	Those who are excessively and, perhaps, obsessively critical of the BBC sometimes seem to follow the maxim that it is all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory. The BBC is one of those institutions which, if we invented it from scratch now, would probably never get on to the statute book or receive a royal charter because of the unusual nature of its set-up and governance. Nevertheless, as an institution it has lasted, created standards of excellence and been a flagship for Britain abroad, and it is a hugely recognised British brand and a vital component of the creative industries in the UKa sector that is becoming increasingly important. In a way it is true, as its critics point out, that in the solar system of broadcasting, the BBC is like a giant gas planet containing many inefficiencies, but still exerting a powerful gravitational pull on standards and making the broadcasting and media universe a much better one than it would be if there were a black hole where the BBC once was.
	I come now to BBC Wales, not least because its headquarters is in my constituencyCardiff, Westand also because of its huge importance in Wales culturally, economically and to the community in Wales. Sometimes the creative industries are not taken seriously by economists. It is only a few years since people involved in economics, which I used to teach, were staggered, puzzled and bemused by the revelation that ABBA was Sweden's most important export industry. Traditional industrial economists could not get their heads round that. It is still true that economists do not recognise the creative industries as an extremely powerful way of growing the economy and as an expanding sector which aims to get value, wealth, income and jobs by creating intellectual property. The sector will become an increasingly important part of the economy, based as it is around high-tech industries.
	More than 1,300 people are employed directly by BBC Wales. Many of them live in and around Cardiff, and many of those in my constituency. In addition, it has been estimated that there is a high multiplier effect in the Welsh economy, with a further 1,000 jobs indirectly attributed to the presence of BBC Wales. Its reputation for excellence is continually enhanced, as it was last night with the launch of the new series of Dr Who, which took place in Cardiff, complete with Daleks on view. I understand that there will be a further showing in London next week for Members of Parliament who would like to see the next episode of the new series. [Interruption.] There are several showings going on, as the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) points out.
	Despite the important economic impact of the BBC in Wales and the recent announcements, the BBC's economic impact has traditionally been far too centralised. For an institution that is supposed to represent the whole of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, its economic impact is still overwhelmingly felt in London and the London region. Until recently, 80 per cent. of the BBC's overall budget was spent in London and two thirds of its employees were employed there. That is why I welcome the outside the M25 strategy. I welcome the fact that Manchester is to become an increasingly important part of trying to get the BBC outside the M25. I appeal for Cardiff, the rest of Wales and the other nations and regions of the UK to be at the forefront of the BBC's thinking about its economic and cultural impact in the UK.
	On the cultural impact of the BBC, with particular reference to Wales, it is no exaggeration to say that the image of Wales and of the devolution project has been massively influenced by the presence and role of BBC Wales in Welsh life. BBC Wales broadcasts excellent sports coverage, although I do not agree with the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) that the BBC is always the best at broadcasting sport, because Sky's coverage of football and Channel 4's coverage of cricket are innovative and have raised standards elsewhere. We need competition and cannot have a single monolithic broadcaster of sport. Nevertheless, sports broadcasts have a huge impact in Wales, as do broadcasts of other aspects of Welsh cultural life, such as the recent opening of the Wales millennium centre.
	BBC Wales has played a crucial role in reaching out to the community through various innovative projects, which other parts of the BBC could seek to follow, such as the digital story-telling project, the Where I live websites and the community studios, which the BBC has opened around Wales in recognising that over-centralisation can even occur within a nation or region of the UK.
	I am concerned about the future governance of the BBC, which might insufficiently take into account the new devolved Britain and the interests of the nations and regions following the Green Paper. Some resources have been devolved, but it is important that the devolution of power accompanies the devolution of resources, because the devolution of resources without the devolution of decision making might lead to an increasingly centralised BBC in terms of management and governance that sends down diktats from London to Cardiff, Manchester, Edinburgh and other parts of the UK.
	When the new slimmer BBC board was set up, it was misguided to remove explicit representation of the nations and regions. Although the new Green Paper contains words of comfort about the structure of the trust, on which the nations of the UK are likely to be represented, it is not good enough to appoint someone and say, Because they are from Wales, they represent Wales on the new trust. The trust should contain specific representation, and it is vital that a position representing the nations and regions is reinstituted when the new board is created.
	When future decisions that directly impact on, for example, BBC Wales are taken on BBC finances and resources, there is a danger that there will be no direct input on behalf of the nations and regions. If the nations and regions do not have a voice on the board, their views will not be made clear and the newly restructured BBC might become dislocated from the devolved reality of modern Britain. I hope that that point will be taken into account in considering issues such as the finances and personnel functions of BBC Wales, because there is a danger that BBC Wales management will no longer be free to manage resources in the newly devolved world.
	Overall, the Green Paper is welcome, and a period of stability is required. I count myself as a friend of the BBC and hope that it will be a flagship in 10 years' time, when the matter next comes up for review.

John Whittingdale: I welcome this debate, which arrives at an opportune moment to consider the future of the BBC.
	I congratulate the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) on both his speech, some of which I agreed with, and the work of his Culture, Media and Sport Committee, which has undoubtedly contributed valuable information and knowledge.
	We can all agree on various things. The broadcasting environment is changing rapidly. We have gone from four or five channels to more than 50 per cent. of the population having access to tens, if not hundreds, of channels, and that trend will undoubtedly continue.
	In some areas, the future is predictable. Digital take-up will continue to grow, which will have a profound impact. In the past 10 years, the BBC's television audience share has fallen from 33 per cent. to 25 per cent. The effect on ITV has been even more significant, with its share falling from 40 per cent. to 23 per cent., which is causing real problems, despite the results that it announced this morning. That trend is likely to continue as more and more households switch to digital, either because they choose to do so or because the Government require them to at some future date.
	In other areas the future is less predictable. The Culture, Media and Sport Committee rightly identified the challenges that might arise from broadband television, from people deciding to watch television on their computer screens and receiving television pictures on mobile telephones. On top of that, in some quarters people believe that the future lies in high-definition television, which might switch the focus back to satellite television rather than digital terrestrial television. Whatever the future holds, it is clearly important to examine the role that the BBC should play and ask whether we need the BBC in a world full of television channels.
	I have always believed that the only justification for having a state-owned and state-financed broadcaster is if it does something distinctive and different that would not otherwise be available from the marketin other words, public service broadcasting.

Michael Fabricant: I am following my hon. Friend's argument with considerable interest. Does he agree that if the BBC or, indeed, any state broadcaster, were wholly and exclusively to confine its output to that which is different from the output of popular broadcasters or commercial broadcasters, its output would, by definition, be unpopular? In that case, how might it sustain its licence fee?

John Whittingdale: I am not sure whether the licence fee is sustainable, an issue which I shall discuss later, but I take my hon. Friend's point and do not believe that the BBC should set out to make unpopular programmes. The BBC must concentrate on high-quality, educational, informative programming, but it should not seek to appeal only to niches or to chase ratings. There is a difference between setting out to make high-quality programmes that then attract large audiences, and setting out to attract large audiences in the first place. To that extent, I welcomed last week's statement by the Secretary of State and share her concern, which is widely felt, that the quality of BBC programming has declined over the years and that there has been a tendency towards copy-cat programming.
	One can point to some extraordinarily high-quality programmes, which are probably as good as any in the world, such as The Blue Planet, The Lost Prince and Auschwitz. However, for every one of those, there are probably 10 make-over programmes, game shows and DIY shows, which raise real concerns about dumbing down.
	I welcome the Government's intention to bring in specific licences for individual BBC services, because each needs a clear and distinct role. That does not mean that, if one BBC service is failing to meet an identified need, it should necessarily look around to find another need. That leads us to question, in some cases, whether the service is needed at all and could be dispensed with.
	The BBC has a particular duty to meet higher standards than those which apply to other broadcasters, partly because it benefits from a very large amount of public money. In that context, I want to consider one or two areas where the BBC has not always lived up to the standards that one would have hoped for. The first is that of harm and offence. Because the BBC is funded by a licence fee that is compulsory for all householders under the age of 75, it needs to take into account the sensitivities of the population. I draw particular attention to the recent transmission of Jerry SpringerThe Opera. That work may have artistic meritcertainly, it won awardsand there was a case for its being shown on television, but showing it on the BBC was bound to generate a huge number of complaints. The BBC should have anticipated that and thought seriously about whether it was appropriate to show it, especially given that the 50,000 complaints that it received came from people who will resent having had to pay the BBC for having shown it. That is now subject to a complaint to Ofcom and I will take great interest in Ofcom's ruling.

Chris Bryant: I could not disagree with the hon. Gentleman more on this issue, not least because when some of the newspapers that excoriated the BBC for showing the Jerry Springer programme first reviewed the theatre production, they said that it was bound to be a sure-fire hit and that they only wished that everybody in the country could get to see it. The important point about the licence fee is that it means that there is something for everybody. Some people may be militant atheists who do not want part of their licence fee to be spent on religious broadcasting. I do not believe that they are rightthere should be something for everybody. Jerry SpringerThe Opera may not be something that everybody wants to watch, but surely it is okay for the BBC to show it as long as it ensures that those who might be offended are aware of that.

John Whittingdale: I do not agree with the something for everybody argument, to which I shall return. Some people's tastes may be confined strictly to game shows and make-over programmes, but that does not mean that the BBC should cater for them when they are adequatelyindeed, over-adequatelysupplied on commercial television channels. On the Jerry Springer programme, my concern is that the BBC has not shown sufficient sensitivity to what is not just religious extremism, as the director-general was quoted as saying, but a very significant body of opinion.
	Another issue that has given rise to, if anything, even more concern, is the BBC's decision in the past few days to pay Mr. Brendan Fearon 4,500 for his contribution to a documentary on the Tony Martin case. The BBC says that there was an exceptional public interest in that payment and that the documentary would not have presented a full picture without Mr. Fearon's contribution. The latter point may well be true, but that does not necessarily mean that there was an exceptional public interest. There is a widespread view that the BBC got it wrong, and I should like it to say so.

Julian Lewis: It is to the credit of the BBC that, in the course of an extensive interview with the person who produced that programme, also interviewed was the former BBC senior employee, now retired, who had drawn up the very guidelines that the programme's producer was praying in aid to justify it. The person who had drawn up the guidelines was sufficiently outraged to say that he had never meant them to be used in that way.

John Whittingdale: I agree that it is to the BBC's credit that it is willing to carry interviews with people who are critical of it. Indeed, those of us who take an interest in these matters find that the BBC devotes huge amounts of coverage to debates about the BBC.
	The significant and welcome change that has happened in relation to harm and offence is the Government's decision that the BBC should be subject to external regulation by Ofcom, but in other areas it is not subject to such regulation. One of those is impartiality and balance. The BBC has long operated on the principle that, if both sides complain, it must be doing something right. That has been its approach to complaints by either of the main political parties, but there are other areas where it is generally felt that the BBC is less impartial than it should be. For example, people who are less supportive of a federal Europe have long complained that the BBC has a biased agenda to push a pro-European Union viewpoint.

Chris Bryant: The hon. Gentleman must have deliberately included that comment to rile me. Will he take it from me that many people on the pro-European side of the argument believe that the BBC has had an anti-European agenda for quite some time and has been particularly poor at explaining the European Unionwhich, indeed, the recent report into the BBC found to be true?

John Whittingdale: I would merely say to the hon. Gentleman that when the BBC, having dismissed such complaints for many years, finally set up an independent group to examine the question, it concluded that the BBC
	suffers from certain forms of cultural and unintentional bias
	and that, despite the good intentions of producers,
	nobody thinks the outcome is impartial.
	This is also relevant to the Catholic church, the Israeli Government, and supporters of hunting, all of whom have felt in the past that they have not had a fair deal from the BBC.

Julian Lewis: Could that institutional and cultural bias have something to do with the fact that the BBC advertises for recruitment purposes far more in the media columns of The Guardian than in all the other newspapers put together?

John Whittingdale: That could certainly have a great deal to do with it. I believe that the BBC is finally trying to put that right, but of course generations of BBC employees have already been recruited through the pages of The Guardian.
	It is not satisfactory for the BBC to continue to regulate itself in this regard. Ofcom is already responsible for adjudicating on complaints about impartiality in the commercial television sector, and the BBC should be so regulated.
	Another area that requires external regulation by Ofcom is that of the enforcement of the BBC's fair trading commitment. Commercial broadcasters, suppliers and other organisations have complained for many years about unfair competition from the BBC and abuse of its market powers. Yet time and again those complaints have been considered for a period by the governors only to be ultimately dismissed. Outside studies such as the recent Graf report on BBC online services and the Lambert report on 24-hour news have shown that changes were necessary, but the BBC has had to be dragged along kicking and screaming.
	There is real concern that the BBC continues to abuse its position. I will give two examples. The first concerns the competition to provide subtitling services to Channel 4, which the BBC won with a bid that was widely believed to be way below cost. As a result, the commercial organisation that had thought that it stood a good chance of winning lost out. The BBC says that it has looked into itindeed, the chairman told me that, having carried out a thorough investigation, he is absolutely satisfied that the process was entirely fair. However, the figures have not been published and there remains considerable suspicion among the commercial providers.
	The second example concerns the requirement by the BBC that songwriters and composers should sign up with publishers who are selected by the broadcasting organisation, which then receives a cut of subsequent royalty payments. That strikes me as wrong and anti-competitive. The BBC is not the only offenderindeed, others are worsebut the BBC has a duty to set an example and should not continue that practice.
	The BBC should come under external regulation for both matters. The Secretary of State said that she would consider allowing Ofcom to adjudicate on matters that relate to the fair trading commitment. That is a step forward, but I hope that she will go further than considering it and actually do it.

Don Foster: The hon. Gentleman made an important point about songwriters and musicians. Is he aware that the issue is being addressed not only by Ofcom, but that there is rightly an Office of Fair Trading investigation into the matter?

John Whittingdale: I was aware that the OFT had received complaints and I hope that it will deal with the matter.
	I share the view of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton and my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) that the National Audit Office should have proper access to the BBC. It is extraordinary that the BBC benefits from 2.8 billion of public money and yet is still not subject to the same scrutiny as all other Government bodies. The Public Accounts Committee has repeatedly raised that matter, yet the Government, for reasons that I do not understand, appear unwilling to allow access. It would enormously improve transparency and accountability if the NAO were given full access.
	Everybody agrees that there is a need for change in governance. The Secretary of State said that the status quo was unsustainable. The new chairman of the BBC made moves to give the governors much more independence and to set up an arm's-length arrangement whereby they have their own staff. Although that is an improvement on the current position, it does not go far enough. That was Lord Burns's conclusion. Indeed, he proposed a unitary board of executive and non-executive directors and a new, independent and separate public service broadcasting commission, which would oversee the use of public money. Ofcom strongly supported that model, which was also supported by Greg Dyke, who said that the Secretary of State should ignore the bleating about the proposals that she was bound to get from people, including the current governors, and simply implement Burns's suggestions.
	Despite all that advice, the Secretary of State has chosen to adopt a compromise solution of a BBC trust. Yet the trust remains part of the BBC. It will be chaired by the BBC's chairman and the Government will appoint its members. It is difficult in practice to perceive any genuine difference between the new BBC trust and the arm's-length arrangement that the chairman of the BBC proposed. The Government have instituted a change but it does not go nearly far enough.
	The Green Paper takes steps in the right direction, but does not go far enough on various aspects. My hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale mentioned independent production. The BBC has been subject to a quota for independent production since 1990. For three years running, it has failed to meet it. Indeed, the proportion decreased year after year. The BBC moved to fulfil the independent production quota only when it was threatened with the possibility of Ofcom imposing fines on it.
	I welcome the director-general's new proposal of a window of creative competition but it does not go far enough. There should be a 50 per cent. maximum for in- house production, as PACT recommends. The Secretary of State has hinted that she will consider that but I hope that she can say that she will go further.
	The BBC should also go further in disposing of its commercial operations. It has agreed to dispense with some of its operations under the worldwide umbrella but it will retain magazine production. The reason why the BBC needs to be in the magazine publishing business is beyond me.
	The Select Committee was right that to say that the licence fee is regressive and unfair. It is essentially a poll tax. Yet, unlike the poll tax that Labour Members condemn, it does not even provide for assistance for those who can least afford to pay. Every year, some 100,000 people are fined for failing to pay the licence fee. In 2003, 20 people went to prison because they could not afford to pay the fines. It is incredibly expensive to collectit costs some 150 million and the Select Committee has rightly drawn attention to the campaign with menaces that the BBC adopts to intimidate people into paying. Despite that, it suffers from widespread evasion, with approximately 200 million lost through evasion every year.
	We are at the point even now when 7 per cent. of people do not listen to or watch the BBC. That number will grow and it will become unreasonable to prosecute people or send them to jail because they fail to pay a licence fee that increases every year to finance programmes that they choose not to watch or channels that they cannot receive.
	The Government's adviser, Lord Burns, said that, over time, sustaining the licence fee will become increasingly difficult. Yet, in the Green Paper, the Secretary of State said that it would continue for at least another 10 years and that consideration of alternatives will not even begin for five years. It is a complete surrender. No wonder The Times described the document as a yellow paper rather than a Green Paper. We must tackle the issue now.
	The Government have also ducked Lord Burns's recommendation that there should be contestable funding for part of the licence fee, which provides some solution to the problem that Ofcom identified of how we continue to have public service programming on the commercial channels, when the value to them of the analogue spectrum diminishes every year.
	The Government, in the Green Paper, have essentially ducked every serious challenge. Despite all the consultations, debates, advisory panels and reports given to them, the conclusion in the Green Paper is that the charter will be renewed for another 10 years, the licence fee will go on for another 10 years and the BBC will continue to govern itself. The Government have stuck their head in the sand and shied away from any significant change. The Green Paper is a lost opportunity, which we will wish to address.

Derek Wyatt: I begin with an apology: I have a ministerial meeting at 3.30 pm and I shall therefore be absent for the winding-up speeches.
	I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman). On Monday, we held a dinner in his honour because he has chaired the Select Committee for 13 years and he will not chair it again. The high esteem in which he is held was shown by the attendance of so many hon. Members who served from 1992 to 1997 and from 1997 to 2001. We have enjoyed the fun and especially the intellectual rigour under his chairmanship.
	Let me consider the duration of the charter. We have Departments for education, health and foreign affairs. Does anyone in their right mind believe that we will not have such Departments in 10 years? Of course we will. Does anyone in their right mind believe that the BBC will not be here in some form in 10 years? Of course it will. Why, therefore, do we need a charter for 10 years? Why is that such a magical period? The charter's duration has always been inconsistentfor example, it has been for nine months and for three years. Why, when we are confronting the greatest change in technology, should we consider granting the charter for 10 years? We must be careful. I do not accept that it is being renewed for five years with a review. The BBC will always be with us, so what is so precious about 10 years, five years, one year and so on? That debate has not been held in the public domain.
	The debate is especially important now because, if we had held it three years ago, no one would have mentioned an iPod or broadband. Those two innovations alone have caused phenomenal change in the way in which we do business and conduct ourselves around the world. Who is to say that there will be no son of iPod or son of broadband in the next two or three years? The pace of change will increase phenomenally and any public sector broadcaster needs to change at the same pace. That is impossible and, therefore, although I do not believe that the argument about the duration of the charter is fatuous, I wish that it would go away. There will always be a BBC and I support the Select Committee's recommendation for a statutory basis. That is the easiest and cleanest way to resolve the matter.
	There is another reason for putting the arrangements on a statutory basis. When we want to put a question about the BBC on the Order Paper, we have to go through an interesting process. I had to ask the Clerks whether could I table the question, because it does not come under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of State. I did that, but I was then told that it did actually come under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of State but not of the House. So I wrote to the Secretary of Statenot the present oneand he said, Actually, it is not my jurisdiction. It is the jurisdiction of the governors. So I wrote to the chairman of the governors, and he said that the matter did not come under his jurisdiction, but under that of Parliament. These things go round and round. If the arrangements were put on a statutory basis, there would be an obligation to answer such questions.
	All the fudging that we have talked about this afternoon has been talked about for quite a while, including issues relating to the National Audit Office and other things that we want. Our discussions are taking place round the edge of the issues because we cannot get to the meat. We cannot get what we want, but we should be able to because we are elected Members acting on behalf of the public. We should be able to cross-examine the BBC in real depth, especially on its accounts. I hope that the Secretary of State will give some more thought to the statutory versus charter argument, and to the length of the charter.
	On independent productions, not only has the BBC failed to reach its targets, but I do not think that it wants to reach them. This presents a big cultural problem. Let us raise the bar to 50 per cent., because that would make the BBC achieve 50 per cent., and let us make that a minimum. How should we do that? Let us consider what the BBC is proposing and try to understand the model involved. Let us imagine that I am the head of BBC documentaries, for example, and therefore also the commissioning head of BBC documentaries. I would get inside offers as well as outside offers, but I could not be impartial. Will the Government consider the ITV network centre model that was created 10 years ago? It operated under a different regime, in which there were many more independent television operators. Under that model, bids had to be made to centre and against the independents. The head of drama or documentaries at ITV network centre would then say, This is the best proposal; we will go with this. That was quickly accepted as the best model. One of the reasons that the 25 per cent. target cannot be achieved is that the system is not transparent inside the BBC. If the BBC cannot solve this problem, we will have to do it for them. It needs a model like the ITV network centre model that will give people inside and outside the BBC the chance to bid. Such a system would be fair. The present system is not, which is why we have problems.
	I am uncertain about the move to Manchester, because Manchester is already a substantial artistic and cultural centre in the north-west. If Government regions have to look outside the M25 and take poverty indicators into account, I cannot see why the BBC should not have to do the same. What is wrong with Sunderland, for example? I cannot see what would be wrong with establishing another media centre somewhere else in Britain. Leeds, Birmingham and Manchester are already well established.
	Furthermore, the 500 million cost of the move to Manchester is simply unacceptable. It equates to the cost of five major hospitals or 40 community hospitals, and such expenditure is intolerable. Under the proposed trust, a director-general could say, We are moving to Manchester, only for the trust to say, Oh, hold on. We haven't approved that. That would upset all the staff involved and all sorts of discussions would ensue about which departments were moving and which were not. That is not the way to run a company. I shall give the new trust some time, but my instinct tells me that the governance of the BBC should involve a FTSE 100 system. If that works for the companies involved, it should be good enough for the BBC. I would use that method to run the BBC, rather than having a trust.
	I am a huge fan of top-slicing. If it was correct, in the 1920s and 1930s, to see the BBC as a cultural icon for the nationin a different way from how it is seen todayand if it was correct for it to have five orchestras, why is it not possible for the BBC to have a film centre? Film is one of the great cultural institutions in this country, so why does not the BBC make films? I do not see the logic there. If the BBC is a great cultural icon with five orchestras, it should also make films. Less than 10 million of the BBC's 2.7 billion income went into making films, yet it has bought 78 million-worth of American films to be shown in Britain. All that money could have gone to our nascent, youthful film makers here. Why should they all have to go to Hollywood? Top-slicing is critical in that regard. We could include a film option. Why, too, is there no community channel in the BBC? Why are there no education, arts or sports channels? Why is there no UK film channel?
	The BBC now has BBC3 and BBC4. Before that, it had BBC Prime and BBC Choice. They lost between 500 million and 600 million, and hardly anyone watched them. Still no one watches BBC3, and only a few people watch BBC4. They cost 120 million each, which is a huge sum. The BBC might not want to provide them, but people out there would like an arts channel, a film channel and a sports channel. How can we get a public sector broadcasting model that is more nimble and nifty if we do not have top-slicing? I encourage the Secretary of State to think again about that.
	On the question of Ofcom and who should regulate the BBC, it would be ironic if the public service publisher model were delivered by Ofcomhowever it might be fundedresulting in Ofcom regulating a brand-new public service publisher but not regulating the BBC. That would be madness. The regulator must ultimately be Ofcom. That is logical. It would not be sensible to set up an alternative Ofcom just for the BBC. Will the Secretary of State think again about the role of Ofcom in this regard?
	On how we are viewed overseas, we talk about the BBC being one of the great bastions of broadcasting, and it is. The BBC World Service is sensational. It is one of our great cultural battalions overseas, along with the Open university and the British Council. However, BBC World television is not sensational but embarrassing. BBC News 24 is not goodit, too, is embarrassing. If the BBC cannot do that properly, why do not we put out a tender and ask UK companies to run those two channels? I bet that ITV News, Sky and the BBC could come together to run a really effective BBC News 24 on half the money that is currently spent. I bet, too, that that would produce a cultural icon that would represent the best of the BBC and provide all the necessary programmes from the independents. I no longer accept that the BBC is the best in that field, and that is a problem that has not been examined properly in the Green Paper.

Don Foster: I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Mr. Wyatt), who made an interesting and provocative speech. I disagree with him on a number of points. For example, I believe that his contention that the charter should not last for 10 years is misplaced. For the very reasons that he gave of the huge changes taking place in the broadcasting ecology, it is crucial that the BBC be given a 10-year period to see it through those changesnot least, the move to digital switchoverwith a degree of certainty.
	I am also concerned about the language that the hon. Gentleman used in regard to top-slicing. He seemed to support the concept of taking money away from the licence fee revenue and using it for other purposes. To be fair, the proposals that he went on to make seemed largely to involve the BBC using that money itself for rather different purposes. I was a little confused by that.
	In some areas, however, I am in total agreement with the hon. Gentleman, not least on his last point about BBC World. He is absolutely right to say that the BBC World Service is a jewel in the BBC's crown that many other countries have tried to emulate without success. BBC World, however, is not in the same category, and we desperately need to do something significantly to improve it.
	I also agree with the hon. Gentleman's comments about the role of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) in his chairmanship of the Select Committee. We welcome much of the work that he has done, especially on the report that we are debating today. I congratulate him, the other members of the Committee and the officers of the Committee on the work that they have put in. The Liberal Democrats fully support the vast majority of the recommendations in the Committee's report.
	Given the Committee's recommendation for the continuation of the licence fee without top-slicing, however, I should like to remind the right hon. Gentleman that it was only about three months ago that he and I were debating this issue in the old Greater London council building across the road. I was arguing in favour of the licence fee, and he, while dodging rain coming in through the roof of the building, was on the other side of the argument. I am delighted that he appears to have changed his mind on that issue. The report is excellent, and I support many of its recommendations. The one recommendation with which I disagree relates to the length of the charterthe report recommends five years, whereas we would support the proposal in the Green Paper that it should be for 10 years.
	Although the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton is critical of some aspects of the BBC, and rightly so in some cases, overall, he is an ardent supporter of the BBC. That is my position, too. We should all recognise the huge benefits of the BBC to this country, both in terms of our citizens and of what it projects about this country abroad. We should praise it for its diversity, educational programming and high-quality drama and comedy; for its work on sports, to which I shall return in a few minutes; for its children's programming free of advertisements; for having one of the world's most trusted websites; for providing a wonderful diversity and range of music offerings, not least on the radio; and, perhaps above all, for its news and current affairs programmes, which are authoritative, accurate and, notwithstanding what others have said, largely impartial. As I have mentioned, there is also the gem of the World Service.
	Even those who never watch BBC television get enormous benefits from the BBC. Many of them listen to some excellent programmes on BBC radio, whether national programmes or excellent local radio station programmes. Let us not forget that 24 per cent. of the licence fee is spent on radio, which is reflected in some of the excellent material produced.
	Even if people do not listen to the radio or watch the television, they still benefit from the BBC's tremendous work in technological development. All hon. Members will recall that the BBC made the first moves to get computers into our schools. We should also remember its development work in relation to the world wide web, and its current work, with more still to be done, on promoting the move towards digital.
	Above all, there is the fact that a large percentage of people who work in other broadcasting organisations have been trained by the BBC. It is, in effect, the university of broadcasting. During the many rounds of interviews that many of us did on the day of the Green Paper's launch, I followed Michael Grade into ITV, where he was about to do an interview immediately before me. The person from ITV who met and greeted him was quick to point out that although he now worked for ITV, he was proud that he had done all his training with the BBC.
	Therefore, even if people do not watch or listen to BBC programming, they benefit from it. For 82 years, the BBC has set standards throughout the world for public service broadcasting. It is the pre-eminent public service broadcaster. Two days ago, a South African newspaper, Business Day, said that
	most of the world, South Africa included, has regarded the BBC as a model of public service broadcasting.
	That is not to say that the BBC always gets it right. I entirely agree with the comments of the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale) about the Brendan Fearon case. The BBC's decision to pay money to that person was disgraceful. It is worth reflecting that there have been two trials involving the Tony Martin case, and all the information about Brendan Fearon's involvement came out in those trials. There was no need to pay him money to get him to repeat what we already knew. It was not in the public interest to do so, and neither would it have helped one iota in our deliberations about individuals' right to protect their homes.

Gerald Kaufman: Is not it a fact that had a newspaper done what the BBC did in that case, it would be a violation of the Press Complaints Commission code, and the PCC would have imposed sanctions on the newspaper concerned? Given that the new leadership of the BBC is determined to turn over a new leaf, would not it be a good idea if it stopped defending its action, apologised and said that it will never happen again?

Don Foster: I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the BBC should apologise. I am sure that he knows, however, that the PCC recognises in its procedures the right for there to be payments to people in certain circumstances, including when it is in the public interest. I simply do not believe that that interview was in the public interest, and I am sure that he agrees. It would have fallen foul of my interpretation of the PCC rules, which are somewhat mirrored by the BBC's own rules.
	Despite the fact that the BBC gets it wrong from time to time, anything that we were to do to damage it seriously would be at our peril. We need a strong, independent and well and securely funded BBC. It has not always been obvious that everybody wants that reference has rightly been made to the disgraceful episodes during the Hutton inquiry involving the behaviour not least of Mr. Alastair Campbell in his attacks on the BBC.
	The other point that has been made strongly in this debate is that the BBC is at is best when there is competition in public service broadcasting. In relation to sport, reference has rightly been made to the enormous benefit seen within the BBC as a result of the excellent cricket coverage by Channel 4 and the excellent football coverage by Sky. It is therefore important that in any debate about the future of the BBC, we also keep an eye on the importance of ensuring support for the other public service broadcasters: currently, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. For that reason, I welcome very much the work that Ofcom has been doing on this issue.
	As many others have said, it is also important to recognise that the broadcasting ecology is changing dramatically. Television can already be accessed through broadband and moves are increasing to enable its reception through mobile phones. At some date in the futureI wish that we had a clear commitment from the Government as to that dateanalogue switch-off will occur as we all move to digital. We have seen a huge increase in the number of channels available to us, with all the difficulties that that presents. Reference has already been made to the declining numbers of people watching ITV1, and that has an impact on the availability of advertising revenue for some of those channels.
	A number of reports have come and gone. The Elstein report, commissioned by the Conservative party, seemed to have been rejected almost as soon as it was published. We have had the excellent report from the Select Committee. We have heard of the various interventions by Lord Birt in his attempt to lobby 10 Downing street and put pressure on the Secretary of State. I am delighted that that pressure was unsuccessful and that she was not persuaded of the argument for top-slicing the licence fee. I was surprised that Lord Birt made such a recommendation given that he had presented a totally opposing view on that issue only a few years earlier when he was heavily involved in his work with the BBC. These things happen, I suppose. As I have mentioned, there has been Ofcom's work on public service broadcasting.
	Even without all those reports and the Green Paper, it is important to remember that the BBC does not stay the same. It has been changing without the need for any of that. As has been pointed out, one change is the ending of involvement in the ratings war. I agree with the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford that we do not want the BBC to become a ghetto for what the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) described as unpopular programming. It is important for the BBC to produce programmes that are popular. What the hon. Gentleman rightly criticised were moves towards what we call dumbing down, and a surfeit of reality and makeover television shows. There are already far too many of those on our screens.
	There have been moves to change the number of staff, not because of the charter review or any other reports. I only hope that the BBC will work hard to ensure that the members of staff affected have a chance to become involved in the new opportunities that the BBC's decision will allegedly create. Similarly, changes have been made to BBC Worldwide that have nothing to do with the review or other reports.
	I accept that many changes are being made, but I do not entirely accept criticism of the BBC's involvement in the publication of magazines, especially music-related and educational magazines and others that are directly connected with programmes. I think it is crucial for the BBC to go on being involved with magazines of that kind.

Chris Bryant: And gardening magazines.

Don Foster: They may also fall into that category.
	I agree with what has been said about the BBC's earlier use of independent producers. We certainly need to change what is going on, and we shall all need to look carefully at the BBC's proposals for a window of creative opportunity. At least that is an example of its moving in the direction that many of us favour, but as has been pointed out by the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Televisionusually known as PACTmany questions remain to be answered about how that window of opportunity will continue to exist.
	Issues that desperately need examination do not seem to have been covered by any of the reports that I have mentioned. The hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan) spoke of the vital importance of the BBC in Wales. It is surprising that there has been no debate anywhere about the relationship between the BBC and S4C. As Members know, the BBC is currently required to provide 10 hours of Welsh language programming for S4C to show. I find it strange that the nature of that relationship has never been challenged. Surely if it is to receive the BBC's material, S4C ought to have far more editorial control over its content.

Chris Bryant: It does.

Don Foster: I assure the hon. Gentleman that that is not the view of people at S4C. We should also try to agree on the current value of those 10 hours of programming, and then agree to enable S4C to negotiate with the BBC on how the money can best be spent, rather than being tied to a fixed number of hours.
	As I said on the day the Green Paper was announced, I broadly agree with a great deal of it. Unlike the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford, I believe that many of its proposals deserve support. I especially welcome the Government's agreement to continue the licence fee and not to allow top-slicing. As the Select Committee said, the licence fee is not perfect; it might be better described as the least worst of the options currently available. If we reflect on the alternatives, we see why that is so.
	In fact, there are only two key alternatives. One is direct funding by the Government of the day. In Australia, a 25 per cent. reduction in the funding of public service broadcasting has been accompanied by increased Government interference. If we want an independent BBC that is well and securely funded, that is not the route we should take. The other option is subscription, advertising or pay-to-view, but all those would lead to the BBC's rejoining the ratings war to secure the maximum number of viewers to boost advertising and the number of pay-per-view clients.
	If we do not choose any of those options, as I hope we will not, we shall be left with the licence fee aswith all its faultsthe least worst option. As I have said, I am delighted that the Government have agreed to retain it and also to retain the charter for 10 years. That is a crucial decision.
	I welcome the Green Paper's proposals to define the BBC's service remit more tightlyalthough it is fair to say that the BBC has already been moving in that direction, with the help of Michael Grade and Mark Thompson, both of whom deserve the praise heaped on them by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton. The Government have added to the original five proposals a sixth relating to the BBC's responsibility for helping to drive forward the switchover to digital. As I said to the Secretary of StateI did not receive an answer on that occasionI hope that we do not expect the BBC to take all the responsibility, because that is a job for the Government. I also hope that we do not expect it to write a blank cheque. The Secretary of State should give us some idea of how much money the BBC can reasonably expect to receive. She said earlier that that would be specified in documents still to be produced, and I hope that it will.
	My one significant disagreement with the Government and the Green Paper concerns the governance of the BBC. I think the whole House accepts that we cannot continue the current arrangements, with the BBC both flag-waver for itself and its own regulator. Under its new chairman, the BBC has already embarked on a bid to separate the governors from the rest of the corporation, but they are still part of the BBC, and the proposals in the Green Paper would perpetuate that. I do not see how the trustees can be truly independent of the BBC. At the very least we need an independent governance working alongside Ofcom to regulate the BBC, but I would go further: I would prefer a totally independent regulator with responsibility for all public service broadcasters, ensuring that they all met their individual remits.

Derek Wyatt: Given the development of broadband televisionnot just HomeChoice, but IPTVthere is no doubt that the trend will continue. In the public sector, how would that be regulated under the scheme favoured by the hon. Gentleman?

Don Foster: As the hon. Gentleman knows only too well, Ofcom is working on the definition of public service broadcasting. We already have approved public service broadcasters alongside the BBC: ITV and Channels 4 and 5. I do not doubt that in due course other companies will bid for listings to gain the benefits, although they may have to meet the requirements as well.
	If there is to be a deal allowing a broadcasting organisation to define itself as a public service broadcaster, in return it must fulfil a remit. That remit will differ from organisation to organisationjust as ITV's remit differs from the BBC's, and Channel 4's differs from Channel 5'sbut I believe that a single regulator could deal with all broadcasters that are defined as, and get the benefits of being, public service broadcasters.
	Despite that significant area of disagreement with the Green Paper, we broadly support many of its recommendations. We believe that overall, it will protect the BBC and ensure that it continues to be strong, independent and well and securely funded. This country has had such a BBC in the past, and we have seen enormous benefits as a result. It should continue in the very different future that we will see in the next 10 to 15 years.

John Grogan: It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster), who spoke with typical energy and enthusiasm, although I disagreed with him on a couple of points. For example, so long as the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale) occupies his current position, I doubt whether the Elstein report is necessarily dead. We should not underestimate the hon. Gentleman's intellectual vigour and power.
	I want to start by briefly quoting The Observer:
	many of the BBC's present popular programmes would have been condemned by the BBC itself five years ago as intolerably shoddy . . . What has happened to the . . . BBC ideal that the invention of television would make it possible to reunite our splintered modern society by giving a common cultural background?
	That was written in 1960, which is before I was born, although admittedly not long before. As many Members have pointed out, many things have changed in broadcasting since that time. For example, let us consider the point that the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford made earlier concerning popular good programming. I think it was Sir Hugh Carlton Greene who said that the BBC's mission is to make the good popular and the popular good, and far more people now watch the BBC's quality output, such as the programme on Auschwitz and Blue Planet. Those programmes have audiences of between 4 million and 5 million, but in the old days of the 1970s, which some people regard as a golden age, perhaps as few as 1 million people watched programmes such as Civilisation. So in many ways, the BBC has renewed its mission in recent years.
	It is a pity that my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), who has been a distinguished Chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, has left the Chamber. I have made two or three attempts to become a member of that Committee in the past eight years, and because I failed, I was not invited to the tremendous dinner that took place the other night. My right hon. Friend was perhaps a little harsh in his assessment of Greg Dyke, the former director-general of the BBC. Everyone has their ups and downs and their pros and cons. My right hon. Friend described BBC4 as his favourite, but that was very much part of the Dyke agenda. Moreover, it is unlikely that Freeview would have been driven through quite so energetically without Greg Dyke's entrepreneurial skill.
	Various Members have mentioned sports coverage, and I agree that there is a great deal of competition in that regard these days. Sky Sports does a tremendous job and Channel 4 has made a marvellous contribution, but Greg Dyke revived BBC Sport. There is tremendous pleasureis there not?in watching the greatest national and international sporting events without the interruption of adverts. So there is something to be said for Greg Dyke.
	In an intervention on my neighbour the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway), the BBC's digital future was mentioned, as was the question of whether it is advertising its own services too much. The BBC cannot win on this one. The Government have given it the job, at least in part, of getting us to the digital future and of encouraging people to buy Freeview boxes and, hopefully, services such as Freesat. It is true that some BBC digital services have been very successful. For example, the two children's channels are a big driver of such services. Many parents are getting Freeview boxes precisely because they provide children's channels that do not run adverts, and which are of a reasonably high quality in most cases. So in a sense, the BBC has a duty to let licence-fee payers know that such services exist.

Nigel Evans: Will the hon. Gentleman also congratulate the BBC on the fact that it is moving its children's department to Manchester, and on recognising that everything good does not have to emanate from London? There are regions outside London, and I am sure that the children's department will flourish in Manchester.

John Grogan: The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. Indeed, if my memory serves me right, BBC Sport and BBC 5 Live will also move to Manchester. The governors will have an interim role to play, in that they will have to sign off the move to Manchester. They said that it was dependent on the outcome of the licence fee settlement, so I suppose that we will have to wait some months yet. The sooner the move happens, the better, and not just for the north-west, as there will also be a ripple effect across the whole of the north of England.
	One of the good things about the BBC's moving north is that it might stimulate the independent production market in the north-west and in the north as a whole. Currently, all the top 10 independent production companies are in London. However, we need to introduce some balance into that debate. It is true that independent producers have great virtues in terms of creativity and speed of reaction, but there is also a virtue in the BBC's continuing to be not just a broadcaster of programmes, but a major producer. Over the years, it has had a great training role in the industry and its production departments have been very creative.
	I hope that the governors will scrutinise carefully in the next few months the different proposals emanating from BBC management. The hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford mentioned various privatisation proposals, and BBC Resources in Londonthe techniciansis up for privatisation, as is BBC Worldwide, which is the BBC's play-out function. So in London, at least, the BBC will be left with lots of in-house lawyers but very few in-house technicians. I am not sure that that constitutes the correct balance, particularly given that in the rest of the country, BBC Resources is being kept in-house.

John McDonnell: Does my hon. Friend think that the drive toward maintaining quality of production can be maintained in the light of the proposed overall budget cut of 15 per cent. and the laying off of 3,500 staff?

John Grogan: That is a good question, and the governors have a big role to play in the next few months in ensuring that quality is maintained in areas where cuts and savings are made. For example, a saving of 10 per cent. in respect of some local radio stations could make a big difference to quality.
	Mention has already been made of parliamentary coverage, and I am pleased to hear that Yesterday in Parliament is safe, but I hope that coverage of political conferences is also safe. Such coverage, which the BBC has previously contemplated cutting back on, is an important function of the BBC. It is important that it maintains a quality presence in those areas, and the governors have a key role to play in insisting on that.
	I welcome the many white tinges to the Green Paper. On the licence fee and governance in particular, the BBC needs to start planning almost immediately for the future. I do not believe everything that I read in the papers, but the Secretary of State does appear to have had a considerable political victory, about which I am pleased. Those two chaps Burns and Birt are indeed noble Lords, but they seem to spend far too much time hanging around No. 10, which is good neither for them nor the nationgolf is a good and much-recommended alternative. Their agenda involves slicing up the licence fee and introducing a public service broadcasting commission, but I have doubts about both. If one top-slices the licence fee and gives it to commercial broadcasters, it will be difficult to convince oneself that the programmes that such broadcasters then make would not have been made anyway. That is a fundamental difficulty with that suggestion.
	I disagree with the detail of Lords Burns and Birt's proposed public service broadcasting commission in a number of ways. They are suggesting that the chair of the BBC executive board be appointed by the Government. That would be a retrograde step for the BBC's independence. When it comes to the stewardship of the BBC, I believe that the new trust model has much to be commended in exclusively representing licence fee payers. The public service broadcasting commission would have the power, as I understand it, to top-slice the licence fee, which would be for ever hanging over the BBC, leading to confusion and continual lobbying.
	I am glad that the Secretary of State decided that Ofcom should not assume a greater role. It is establishing itself as a regulator, among other things, of commercial broadcasting, and the skills involved in that are very different from those required to regulate public service broadcasting.
	I had the pleasure of attending a BBC function last night. I have at least two roles in this Parliament: one is chairing the all-party BBC group, the other acting as vice-chair of the all-party Mongolia group. The BBC has just produced a programme on Genghis Khanclassic public service broadcasting that will go out at prime time in April. We had a preview of the programme last night. The BBC is known throughout the world, and in Mongolia particularly, for the World Service and for the output of BBC journalists. I hope that the BBC will produce such quality programmes and put them out at prime time for many years to come. BBC 1 is still the most popular television channel in our nation. It is a channel that people dip in and out of and gain experiences that they would not otherwise have. I commend the Green Paper and hope that it will soon be a White Paper.

Andrew Robathan: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan). We last participated in a debate together on Second Reading of the Communications Bill some two and a half years ago, when we clashed slightly. I have always enjoyed his speeches and we shall miss them after the next general election.
	I come to this debate as a layman, and I want to express a layman's view. I have to confessit is a confession, having sat through debates on the Broadcasting Act 1996 and the Communications Act 2003that I want to convey the impressions of many people in this country, which are certainly borne out by my constituents.
	I was brought up on the BBC after the war, when schoolmasters used to tell me about the opening bars of Beethoven's fifth symphony, which presaged the news and used to go out around the world. It was heard by the resistance in France. The BBC was a great national institution of which I and my parents were proud. I thus approach this debate on the BBC more in sorrow than in anger.
	I was brought up on Reith and Reithian principles. I was brought up hearing the news read by Alvar Liddell[Interruption.] A bit before my time, perhaps, but I think he was still alive then. I was also brought up on the World Service, which provided a fantastic image of Britain around the world. We always watched the BBC news because is was self-evident that it would be better than any other news provision.
	There have been dramatic changes. I realise that the future of the BBC is a very complicated matter. I do not want to go into too much detail about the Green Paper, but to point out how the BBC has changed for the worse. If the BBC can be reformed, so be it, but it does not look much like it at the moment. We have heard about the dumbing down of the BBC, and spending licence payers' money on make-overs of people's houses and gardens is, frankly, pretty shockingand many of my constituents agree. There is Fame Academy, whatever that may be! It is certainly not what the BBC was set up to produce.
	No longer does the BBC provide what everyone wishes to watch. I watch the World Service, or BBC Worldwide television as I believe it is now sometimes called, from time to time when I am abroad with the International Development Committee. I have to say that it is not producing the image of Britain that I would wish to see portrayed outside this country. I find it extraordinarily politically correct and not at all what I would like to see.

Andy Burnham: I am trying to follow the thread of the hon. Gentleman's remarks. Does he agree with the recent outburst of his Front-Bench colleague that the BBC is full of dangerous left-wing radicals?

Andrew Robathan: I am not quite sure to which colleague the hon. Gentleman refers.

Andy Burnham: That onethe hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale).

Andrew Robathan: As it happens, I recall it being said when I was at Oxford university that if anyone wanted to get a job in the BBC, it was necessary to be really left-wing, because Conservatives do not want to change things, which is not very interesting, whereas the left want to change things. A friend of mine, who is still with the BBC, bears that out. I am not sure whether it is populated with dangerous left-wing radicals, but I suspect that many there are left-wing.
	I want to point out, by referring to the Gulf war of 2003, where the BBC has particularly let us down. I supported the Government's position on going to war and, funnily enough, unlike some Labour Members, I still do. Speaking as a former soldier, I understood a little of what was happening on the ground, but I found that BBC reporting seemed more designed to back up the anti-war sentiments and prejudices of some reporters. After hearing that the British Army was bogged down and had moved only 100 miles in a couple of days, I eventually switched off the BBC and started watching Sky. I reiterate the point that I am someone who was brought up to believe that the BBC was the best news channel. It was clear that the BBC reporting of the war was biased and, frankly, it still is. I say this not in defence of the Government, but I often notice that, in respect of what is happening in Iraq, the negative aspects covered by BBC journalists are much greater than the positive aspects.
	The hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) asked me about political bias in the BBC. James Naughtie, in a dialogue with a Minister last week on the Today programme, spoke about when we win the election. I have to say that that is both extraordinary and telling. I do not know James Naughtie, but I do know which way his politics lean. The Government complain about the BBCwe know that it has been critical of the Government from Hutton and so forthand it is interesting to note that the BBC tends to criticise the Government from the left, not the right.
	Many MPs wake up to the Today programme. Having reflected on it yesterday, I was driven to participate in today's debate by listening to the Today programme this morning. Two things emerged from it. First, the BBC no longer reports the news on a programme such as Today; it prefers to make it. This morning, it featured an undercover investigation of an event in a prison in Scotland. I question whether it was right for the BBC to send an undercover reporter there. Is the BBC there to report and inform or to make the news? That seems a perfectly fair question. That problem crops up all the time. The story made the headlines in the news, but it was actually only a story about what the BBC had done.
	What will the BBC do next? Will it entice people to break the law? That is not so far-fetched when we discover, as my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford pointed out, that the BBC paid 4,500 to a nasty little criminal who should probably still be in jail. Was that in the public interest? Certainly not, according to the person who wrote the guidelines for the BBC, as was mentioned earlier. What all that boils down to is the vanity and arrogance of the programme makers, who believe that they should set the agenda, they should make the news and they should report it.
	The second point that goaded me into making this speechand, by the way, getting it off my chestwas listening to John Humphrys interviewing Martin McGuiness. John Humphrys is well known as the scourge of politicians. We can all agree with that, and to be fair to him, he was fairly tough with Martin McGuiness this morningas well he might be, as Martin McGuiness's organisation is almost certainly behind the biggest bank robbery that has ever taken place in this country and is heavily implicated in the murder of Robert McCartney.
	John Humphrys had good reason to be fairly tough, and he was. Normally, he would not let a politician get a word in edgeways, but he gave Martin McGuinness well over 30 seconds to make an opening statement. Humphrys is normally tough with politicians and, to be fair, Martin McGuinness at least has some accountability in electoral terms. However, as they say in Belfast, even the dogs in the street know that he is a member of the Provisional IRA's army council, but Humphrys did not ask him about that. The questions that he wanted to ask were quite tough, but more reasoned.
	When discussing the murder of Robert McCartney, did Humphrys ask Martin McGuinness about the murders that took place in Londonderry when he was head of the IRA there? That they happened is well documented. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) gave a description in the House last year of an interview that he had with Martin McGuinness in Londonderry in the early 1970s. He said that McGuinness admittedor boasted, if one wants to put it that waythat he had ordered the deaths of more than 10 Catholics whom he considered to be informers.
	I found the interview irritating because Humphrys did not do what he is there to do. He should have asked the difficult questions, but did not. That is what I mean when I say that the BBC's agenda is set by people like him. Their arrogance when challenged is worrying in the extreme. As I said, though, at least Martin McGuinness is elected, as are we. Like us, he can be held accountable, but broadcasterspace Huttonare not accountable, except to the BBC charter and Parliament. Therefore, this debate is our opportunity.

John McDonnell: I can understand the traditional allegations that the BBC is pro-Labour, left wing, and all the rest of it, but is the hon. Gentleman really suggesting that John Humphrys and others are supporters of Sinn Fein or the IRA? Does he think that the BBC is some sort of cell of the IRA army council? That would be a bizarre allegation.

Andrew Robathan: I do not think that I even began to suggest that. My point is that although John Humphrys would give people like the hon. Gentleman a hard ridehe would certainly do that to a Minister or a shadow Ministerhe did not do the same for Martin McGuinness.

John McDonnell: Will the hon. Gentleman give way again on that point?

Andrew Robathan: Oh, go on then.

John McDonnell: What does the hon. Gentleman conclude from that? Is John Humphrys in some way biased towards Sinn Fein?

Andrew Robathan: I conclude that John Humphrys might be worried about giving the IRA too hard a time. He certainly did not give Martin McGuinness the reasonably hard time that he should have given him.
	I believe that the BBC no longer provides the public service broadcasting that it should. Far too much, it follows the whims and ideas of arrogant, self-important and unaccountable broadcasters. Some are very good, and many programmes are also very good, but I want the BBC to uphold Reith's principles much more.
	Like my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford, I believe that there is a role for public service broadcasting, but we need to consider how it is delivered.

Nigel Evans: My hon. Friend is concentrating on the problems with the BBC, and wants it to do more in respect of public broadcasting. However, Friday is red nose day. Does he accept that the BBC has played a vital role for many years in raising millions of pounds for charity? That money goes to lots of good causes, especially ones that help young people.

Andrew Robathan: I am always delighted and thrilled, of course, when people give money to charity, by whatever means.
	I turn now to the licence fee, which I consider to be a wholly outdated tax. I resent it, as do a great many others. It is extraordinary and illogical that the Government should force all citizens with a television to pay a licence fee even if they never watch the BBC, for which that licence fee money pays. As my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford said, it is now possible to watch television on a mobile telephone. The licence fee has been left behind by technology, as much as anything else, but it has also outlived its usefulness. I believe that it contributes to the BBC's bloated sense of self-satisfaction. We need to move on and lose some of that bloated organisation.
	Finally, I was asked whether I thought that the BBC was made up of dangerous left-wing radicals. When it comes to bias, it is pretty extraordinary that, some years ago, the Government got away with appointing Gavyn Davis as chairman. He has now gone, of course, but it is alleged that he wept at Labour headquarters when Neil Kinnock lost the 1992 general election. His wife is still an adviser to the Chancellor.
	The BBC also got away with appointing Greg Dyke, a Labour donor, as director-general. He has many attributes, but he too has moved on. In addition, the Governmentand it is no good suggesting that it was not their decisionalso got away with appointing a former card-holding member of the Labour party as its political editor. That suggests that there is not as much balance as one might like.
	People may say that the Conservative party in government was just as bad, but it was not.

Chris Bryant: What about Sir Christopher Bland?

John McDonnell: Or Marmaduke Hussey?

Andrew Robathan: It is true that Sir Christopher Bland was once a member of the Conservative party, although I do not know whether that is still the case. However, John Birt was appointed BBC director-general when those gentlemen were on watch. That shows the sort of balance that is required, but both have now moved on.
	I said that I would speak in lay terms about what a lot of people feel about the BBC, which should not be simply dismissed. Earlier, I went to my office for a pre-arranged meeting, and found on my desk a pile of correspondence. The top letter was from a 70-year-old constituent, a carer in Lutterworth, and I am pretty sure that she is not a member of the Tory party. There are not many in my area, and I know most of them. Her husband is blind and her daughter is deaf, and she cares for both of them. I was amazed at her prescience in writing to me yesterday, and I should like to read some of her letter to the House. She wrote:
	With their lies, they are destroying this country of ours. They stoop at nothing. The BBC is completely controlled by Labour. It's like everything comes straight out of No. 10 which we hear on the news. We have to pay a licence fee and the BBC should be fair. We seldom watch BBC for news.
	Of course, that is just one person's view. However, I assure the House that many people in the country feel the same way.

Chris Bryant: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan), who has spent the past 16 minutes getting things off his chest. I hope that the therapy has been successfulmine is yet to come. He mentioned dangerous left-wing radicals

Andrew Robathan: Yes!

Chris Bryant: I used to work at the BBC, but it is not often that I am referred to in those terms.
	It is dangerous when politicians spend too much time obsessing about the party political affiliations of journalists. It is important that journalists who use the written wordscribblers, so to speakand those who work in television and radio should be free to have political views of their own. The political correspondent for ITN, for instance, is a former member of the Conservative party. I applaud his professionalism in the conduct of his work. He is a very good broadcaster, and it is best to leave matters of political allegiance to one side.
	The hon. Member for Blaby also referred to Sir Christopher Bland, for whom I used to write speeches. Having been a member of the Conservative party, he was first appointed to the post of chair of the BBC governors by the previous Conservative Government. However, it is important to recall that the Labour Government, on coming to power in 1997, reappointed him for a second term.

Andrew Robathan: I concede that the hon. Gentleman is knowledgeable and thoughtful on these matters. However, I believe that the BBC lacks balance, especially given the appointments that I mentioned earlier.

Chris Bryant: The appointment of Gavyn Davis as chairman of the BBC was not a wise move, for some of the reasons outlined by the hon. Gentleman. I thought that he would always have to try to take the side of the BBC, even if that was wrong. There is always a difficulty in appointing someone with a political affiliation to the chairmanship of the BBC, but that does not mean that a chairman must never have had any political viewswhich seemed to be the way in which the hon. Gentleman was movingnor do I believe that the BBC should appoint people to senior positions as journalists on the basis of their having or not having political affiliations, or because other people in the organisation have political affiliations that need to be mathematically evened up. It is important that journalists be appointed on merit and nothing else.
	I shall return to the main substance of the debate. We are considering the next 10 years of the BBC. The Government have been entirely right in advocating support for the licence fee. Unlike my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), I support the licence fee. Elements of it are regressive, because everyone must pay it, so it falls as a greater percentage of income on the poorest people, but it is a good principle because it enables everyone in the country, whether rich or poor, to watch the best programming. That could not be achieved without a universal licence fee, as can be seen in other countries that do not have the same system of funding and rely more on subscription services for providing the best programming.
	I believe that although the licence fee may have a regressive tinge, it is important in ensuring[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Blaby has incited the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale) to further hyperventilation. His therapy has clearly not finished.

John Whittingdale: I merely question how the hon. Gentleman can possibly say that a flat rate tax of 121, payable by everyone, with no means-tested assistance, has only a tinge of regression.

Chris Bryant: I have already accepted that it is a regressive tax, but the benefits accrue primarily to the poorest people in the country. That is one of the great strengths of the licence fee.
	It is important not to succumb to the market failure argument for the licence fee and the BBC. I do not want a BBC that provides only programmes that would not be provided elsewhere, such as Shakespeare, Schiller and Shostakovich. I know from speaking to my constituents that they value many of the programmes on public service broadcasting that I suspect the hon. Member for Blaby least enjoys

Michael Fabricant: And does not watch.

Chris Bryant: Yes, so he has no idea whether they are good.
	It is important that the licence fee ensures that something is available for everyone. Historically, the BBC devoted too much of its time, energy, budget and creativity on a particular brand of middle England listening and viewing. It is entirely right that in recent years it has been more courageous. One of the best programmes produced by the BBC in recent years, although it is not much watched or commented on, is Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. Everyone in the Chamber seems to be staring at me as though they had never heard of it. It is a fine programme.
	We have heard reference to the fact that the BBC makes provision for the cultural elite of the land through BBC4, but that it reaches wider audiences through BBC3. If the licence fee is to be sustainable into the future, it is important that the BBC makes provision for young people and people from different ethnic backgrounds, and not simply to the political class that likes to hear itself on Radio 4 at the end of the day or the next morning.
	The licence fee is a good principle, because other methods of funding public service broadcasting around the world simply do not work and are inadequate. Conservative Members have argued that it is important that the licence fee should not be used as a means of rigging competition in the market. They should acknowledge that countries such as Germany, where there is a mixed system with a licence fee and advertising funding, have precisely those problems, but writ large. It is important that the licence fee alone should fund the BBC.
	The system of funding public service broadcasting in Holland was changed recently. The licence fee was abolished, and it is now funded with a percentage of tax take every year.

Si�n Simon: If the licence fee is important in maintaining what is good about the BBC, which it may be, is it not important by the same logic to get rid of at least part of the licence fee to put right what is wrong with the BBC? If the means of funding protects what is good, does it not also protect what is bad and prevent reform?

Chris Bryant: My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I shall come to some of the dangers of a monolithic BBC. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan) referred to the BBC sometimes being too focused in London. Similarly, in Wales it is sometimes too focused south of the M4. It is difficult to hear voices from the valleys or north Wales on BBC services.
	There are problems with the licence fee, but we must ensure that there is scrutiny, not by politicians trying to tell broadcasters what to put on television, but by exposing them to the scrutiny of those who pay the licence fee and whom we represent. I do not believe that there is much support in the land for advertising to support the BBC's finances. That would make it more difficult for other commercial operators, and as the Government's consultation shows, people value the fact that the BBC is without adverts. They sometimes become irritated by the BBC's adverts for itself, which we hear too regularly now during an evening's broadcasting.
	The BBC must be big enough to make a difference in the market. When I worked for the BBC, a taxi driver in Brussels asked me who I worked for. When I said the BBC, he said, I love the BBC and the programmes it produces, especially 'Inspector Morse', 'Brideshead Revisited' and 'The Jewel in the Crown'. I did not like to tell him that none of those was produced by the BBC.
	It is important that the BBC is a large enough organisation and has a large enough pot of money to produce serious quality programmes and to provide competition for quality in the market. That helps other UK broadcasters to rise to a higher standard, because they know that they must compete for audiences on the basis of quality and not just in the bargain basement. However, the BBC should not be a monolith, and one of the problems in recent years has been to ensure that it fulfils its statutory requirement to purchase programming from the independent sector, which can provide the vibrancy, excitement and variety that the internal BBC model simply cannot provide.
	Year after year, the BBC failed to reach the 25 per cent. level, which the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) referred to as a ceiling. It is intended to be not a ceiling but the minimum. If we are to have a strong audiovisual sector throughout the UK, it is important that the BBC moves further out of London and the M25 circle and commissions programmes not just from companies with a brass plate on a door in Banbury and so on, but from companies that are genuinely based further afield around the country. It should increase the amount of commissioning from the independent sector.
	It would be remiss of me not to say something about access. My constituents do not have access to Freeview, which cannot be rolled out there until the digital switchover. That is why some 70 per cent. of households have already moved to digital through Sky. However, many cannot afford to take out expensive subscription services. Some might say that we now have the Sky Freesat option, but it is a little like the Holy GhostI know that it exists, and I have read about it in lots of publications, but I have never actually seen it.

Kevin Brennan: Like a Tory in the Rhondda.

Chris Bryant: Indeed.
	The Sky Freesat option is phenomenally difficult to purchase. Before Christmas, Sky tried to increase the take-up of its services with an enormous publicity campaign, but it did not publicise the Freesat option at all. I hope that the Government will consider pushing the BBC a little further not only to support the Sky Freesat option, but to consider an alternative free satellite option that might allow equal access to all who pay the licence fee.
	It is a convention that when we talk about broadcasting we spend nearly all the time talking about television, but radio is a still-growing area of broadcasting in this country and the BBC's radio services are just as important as its television ones. I have in mind not only the services that we all listen to, such as Radio 4, Radio 3 and, increasingly perhaps, Radio 2

Si�n Simon: Radio 5 Live.

Chris Bryant: My hon. Friend is just reminding us of the programmes that he appears on. We should underline that BBC radio should provide a genuine alternative to commercial services, and not always just ape them.

Andy Burnham: My hon. Friend supports the BBC and so do I, but will he accept that in the past 10 to 15 years the BBC has significantly undervalued and underinvested in its local radio services?

Chris Bryant: I am grateful to my hon. Friend because that is precisely the point that I was going to make. The BBC needs to understand that local radio services should mean genuinely local radio services. For example, it is astounding that the BBC in Wales has no ISDN link for people to be able to do interviews anywhere in the valleys or in mid-Wales. That is the sort of issue that the BBC needs to resolve for the future if it is to maintain its regional strength.
	The hon. Member for Blaby mentioned the World Service briefly, and it is an important part of Britain's contribution to the world. One need not talk to many politicians in countries that have experienced dictatorships or restrictions on state broadcasters to realise what an important part the BBC has played, through the World Service, in maintaining Britain's reputation and enhancing human rights. However, I wish the BBC had more freedom to provide a better international television service. Perhaps my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State could address that point when she winds up. I would like to see a BBC television world service, because that could offer the world something very significant.

Michael Fabricant: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who is knowledgeable about BBC matters, although I do not always agree with him. I share with him the privilege of working under the chairmanship of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman). I joined the National Heritage Select Committeenow the Culture, Media and Sport Committeein 1992 and I have been a member since, apart from a brief aberration when I joined the Home Affairs Committee.
	The BBC is a subject to which we often return, and it is interesting that in this debate we have come to praise the BBC, not to bury it. Although some hon. Members have expressed their disquiet about individual aspects of the BBC, we all recognise that, as someone said earlier, the BBC is the pre-eminent public sector broadcaster, not only in the UK but in the world

Don Foster: That was me.

Michael Fabricant: Another hon. Member demonstrated that he spends much time outside the Chamber travelling by mentioning that the South African Broadcasting Corporation had only recently praised the BBC model

Don Foster: That was me, too.

Michael Fabricant: Well, I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has come to visit the Chamber today.
	Not everything is rosy in the garden. There have been changes in the environment, as the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton said. In 1998, all broadcasting was analogue, but now more than half of all television transmissions are received digitally. The Government have a programme for analogue switch-off, but as the right hon. Gentleman also pointed out, we must ensure that we do not develop a digital divide that prevents people from viewing television when all analogue transmitters are switched offin the same way that we do not want a digital divide in access to the worldwide web. The Committee addressed that issue in its report, A public BBC.
	The licence fee has been debated since the start of the National Heritage Select Committee. We allat least, all of us bar oneaccept that the licence fee is a regressive tax. My hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale) described it as a poll tax. However, we must accept that it is the least worst way to fund the BBC. No one has so far pointed out the effect on ITV and Channels 4 and 5 if the BBC were funded by advertising. The advertising cake is a defined size and if the BBC were to take just a 1 billion slice, let alone the amount it receives at the moment, it would cripple all forms of terrestrial commercial broadcasting, which at the moment offers a counterbalance to the BBC. We may not like that, but it is economic fact.
	I emphasise how pleased I am that the Secretary of State has rejected the ridiculous idea of top-slicing. It would have created real political pressure on the BBC and the Government's wish for
	A strong BBC, independent of government
	would not have been maintained.
	The Government have severely passed the buck on the trustees. Whether the trustees will work as independent arbiters is not the point. The point is that justice has to be seen to be done. When complaints are made against the BBC by individual viewers and listeners, or by commercial organisations who feel that the BBC is competing unfairly, a final adjudication by the governors of the BBC is never seen to be fair whether the BBC is judged guilty or not. My fearindeed, my predictionis that whether the trustees are independent or not, their adjudication will not be seen as fair. The trustees will be seen as an integral part of the BBC, no matter how hard we try to ensure a distance. The only way to ensure that the BBC is seen to be judged fairly is to allow an independent organisation to adjudicate. That might be a Beebcom or Ofcom, although many members of the Committee believed that the latter has enough to deal with without adding the BBC.
	We must also consider the BBC's provision of programming. My hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) has asked me to emphasise yet again the good work that the BBC does to encourage charitable contributions, such as red nose day. Of course, the coverage that the BBC gave to the tsunami was one of the reasons why so much money was raised for that. It is worth remembering that the BBC was able to cover that event wellnot just at the time, but in the immediate aftermathbecause of the large number of its broadcasters and correspondents based overseas. Let us remind ourselves that the BBC has more foreign correspondents than CNN, all three American television networksABC, CBS and NBCFox and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation combined. The BBC provides a tremendous resource through not only the World Service, which several hon. Members have commended, but its correspondents, who are seen on television stations in America and throughout the world via news syndication. They promote the values of not only the BBC, but Britain.
	The Green Paper, which followed on closely from the Select Committee report, had a lot of good in it. However, it does not address the main problems that face the BBC or the population's perception of it. I hope that the Secretary of State will be able to respond to those points and, especially, tell us how the board of trustees will be seen to be independent and separate from the corporation's management.

Tessa Jowell: I pay tribute to hon. Members on both sides of the House who have contributed to the debate. Let us remember that we are debating both a Select Committee report and a Green Paper. Hon. Members will not need reminding that Green Papers are Government proposals for further consultation, and I think that our debate has made a significant contribution to that process.
	Before I deal with the substantive matters that have been raised, I join other hon. Members in paying the warmest possible tribute to the distinguished leadership of the Select Committee provided by my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman). In addition to inspiring our awe and putting us on our mettle, he has earned our affection and greatest possible respect for the seriousness with which he has treated each of the many subjects that his Committee has investigated and the loyalty that he has attracted. The Committee's reports are taken seriously by not only my Department, but the many interested bodiesone might say stakeholdersin the wider industry. He has a remarkable and distinguished record and we are all in his debt.
	I would also like to thank Lord Burns, who has been the independent adviser during the process of charter review. He has done an invaluable job, together with the literally thousands of members of the publicthe licence fee payerswho have contributed to the consultation.
	Let me begin by setting out the context in which the charter review and the Select Committee report are being considered. Debates about the BBC sometimes seem to be predicated on the question of what we should do about it, almost as if it is somehow an unintended consequence of our broadcasting policy. Let me make it absolutely clear that successive Governments have supported, albeit in different ways, a BBC that represents a substantial intervention in the broadcasting market. That has the consequence that policy, and especially and increasingly competition policy, must be adapted to fit in with that fact. That situation exists because the BBC enjoys great support among the British people. A high level of support for the BBC was dramatically shown in the consultation and polling that we undertook.
	The BBC underpins the principle of universal access to free-to-air broadcasting, which is important for this country. As the debate has reflected, we are well aware of the challenges to that founding principle that are created by the growth of digital television. The Government and the Opposition strongly support that growthor revolutionbecause the British people also back it. However, as we navigate our way towards a wholly digital Britain, we will have to ensure that the principle of free-to-air access is not lost. It will be a challenge to ensure that vulnerable and elderly people and those on low incomes continue to enjoy such access. Hon. Members will know from the research that has been published that an enormous amount of work is being done to ensure that we get the situation right. We need to deal with the important individual elements that will make this big policy work, so the timetable for switchover will be finally confirmed only towards the end of the year.
	We should not underestimate the trust that people put in the BBC. The hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) referred to its coverage of the tsunami. We know that there is a clear settlement in this country. People understand that when they buy their newspapers, which are part of our free and unregulated press, they are increasingly buying opinions. When they turn on television or radio news, however, they expect to hear impartial news that presents fact. That explains the importance of the impartiality and accuracy requirements that we place on our public service broadcasters.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton made an important point about future-proofing the BBC's structure, although I know that he will not like that term. The currents incumbents in the posts of chairman and director-general are excellent. The structure must be flexible enough to adapt to the changes that the BBC will be called on to make between now and switchover. Like any functional organisation, the BBC is not built around the identity or skills of the present incumbents. I am confident that the structure will ensure that.
	The BBC will have a critical role in leading the digital revolution and securing universal cover through digital terrestrial television. Pursuance of free-to-air universal access is an important objective and I take all the points that have been made about the benefits of Freesat. I hope that we shall begin to see competition in the development of the free satellite offer to supplement and create choice.

Andy Burnham: My right hon. Friend is describing the broad policy context in which the BBC operates. The future of the BBC will in part be shaped by the future of ITV and she will know that today ITV announced a 57 per cent. increase in profits. She will also know that during the recent Ofcom review of public service obligations, Members were given a clear commitment about regional programming, so does she share my shock at the revelation that ITV plans to axe the Sunday politics programme from its autumn schedule?

Tessa Jowell: I cannot deal with the specific programme decision to which my hon. Friend refers, but I can put on the record, in the strongest possible terms, the House's agreement to ITV's public service broadcasting obligations. ITV has clear obligations in relation to regional broadcasting and the whole House will expect the company to stand by them.

Nigel Evans: As a north-west MP, too, I stress the importance of the ITV regional politics programme to us. Although we cannot expect the Minister to give us an answer about the security of that programme in the future, the Sunday Supplement could at least tell its viewers that the company believes in regional broadcasting and that it has a social obligation to ensure that politics in the north-west is given fair air time in the Granada region. The viewers should be told on Sunday that the future of the programme is assured.

Tessa Jowell: The hon. Gentleman is right. I hope that ITV and the regulator, who oversees compliance with the public service broadcasting obligation, will have heard both those interventions.
	Time is short, so I shall quickly go through the remainder of my concluding remarks. The role of the BBC in not acting in a gratuitously competitive way in relation to other broadcasters is an important part of retaining plurality in broadcasting. The new regime set out in the Green Paper provides clear strictures, including service licences, fining and the window of creative competition, to constrain what has, in the past, been unacceptably predatory competitive behaviour by the BBC. I underline my support for the comments made by several Members about the important contribution of the independent sector. The BBC licence fee should be seen as venture capital for creativity in this nation. There are great possibilities, as yet underdeveloped, for the independent sector to make a contribution.
	Three models for changes to governance were set out in the Green Paper: the BBC's preferred model, which relied on behaviour change; the Burns panel model which envisaged a plc structure that was Higgs-compliant; and the model we opted for, which is a BBC-specific solutionthe BBC trust. The House should understand the radical nature of both the change and the challenge that it poses the BBC. The model deals with the unsustainability of the present position, whereby the governors of the BBC are both its cheerleaders and its regulators, but it does something else as well. It sets out the accountability of the BBC trust and its members to the licence fee payer. That is explicit. It was only after careful consideration of the Select Committee's alternative recommendation that we reached that conclusion.
	The final point in deciding on the governance model we chose was to secure the strength and independence of the BBCnot to create a model that moved the BBC nearer to the Government but one that brought it closer to the licence fee payer. There has been considerable discussion of the licence fee in the debate. The licence fee will fund the BBC for the next 10 years but with two important break points. The first will be to determine its level. The second relates to alternative models of funding in the knowledge of the impact of switchover and whether licence fee payments should be used to ensure plurality in public service broadcasting.
	The structure that we have proposed and the options we have considered provide the BBC with the strength and flexibility to meet the great challenges it will face over the next 10 years. Most of all, the confidence and faith held in the BBC by its licence fee payers recall the founding Reithian valuesthe BBC's role to educate, inform and entertain. I would summarise that as being a good example of traditional values in a modern setting
	It being three hours after the commencement of proceedings on the motion, Madam Deputy Speaker put the Question necessary to dispose of proceedings, pursuant to Standing Order No.54 (5) (Consideration of estimates) and Order [7 March].
	Resolved,
	Department for Culture, Media and Sport
	That, for the year ending with 31st March 2005, for expenditure by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport
	(1) further resources, not exceeding 63,523,000, be authorised for use as set out in HC 325,
	(2) a further sum, not exceeding 65,461,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund to meet the costs as so set out, and
	(3) limits as so set out be set on appropriations in aid.
	Madam Deputy Speaker proceeded to put forthwith the Questions relating to Estimates which she was directed to put at that hour, pursuant to Standing Order No. 55 (1) and (3) (Questions on voting of estimates, c.) and Order [7 March].

ESTIMATES, 200506 (NAVY) VOTE A

Resolved,
	That, during the year ending with 31st March 2006, a number not exceeding 44,180 all ranks be maintained for Naval Service and that numbers in the Reserve Naval and Marine Forces be authorised for the purposes of Parts 1, 3, 4 and 5 of the Reserve Forces Act 1996 up to the maximum numbers set out in HC 291 of this Session.

ESTIMATES, 200506 (ARMY) VOTE A

Resolved,
	That, during the year ending with 31st March 2006, a number not exceeding 128,945 all ranks be maintained for Army Service and that numbers in the Reserve Land Forces be authorised for the purposes of Parts 1, 3, 4 and 5 of the Reserve Forces Act 1996 up to the maximum numbers set out in HC 291 of this Session.

ESTIMATES, 200506 (AIR) VOTE A

Resolved,
	That, during the year ending with 31st March 2006, a number not exceeding 56,140 all ranks be maintained for Air Force Service and that numbers in the Reserve Air Forces be authorised for the purposes of Parts 1, 3, 4 and 5 of the Reserve Forces Act 1996 up to the maximum numbers set out in HC 291 of this Session.

ESTIMATES, EXCESSES, 200304

Resolved,
	That, for the year that ended with 31st March 2004
	(1) resources, not exceeding 69,497,995.67, be authorised for use to make good excesses of certain resources for defence and civil services as set out in HC 324;
	(2) a sum, not exceeding 67,597,194.64, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund to make good excesses of certain grants for defence and civil services as so set out; and
	(3) limits as so set out be set on appropriations in aid.

SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, 200405

Resolved,
	That, for the year ending with 31st March 2005
	(1) further resources, not exceeding 7,003,959,000, be authorised for defence and civil services as set out in HC 325,
	(2) a further sum, not exceeding 6,008,327,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund to meet the costs of defence and civil services as so set out; and
	(3) limits as so set out be set on appropriations in aid.
	Ordered,
	That a Bill be brought in upon the foregoing resolutions relating to Supplementary Estimates, 200405, and Excesses, 200304, and the resolutions of 9th December relating to Supplementary Estimates, 200405: And that the Chairman of Ways and Means, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Paul Boateng, Dawn Primarolo, Mr. Stephen Timms and John Healey do prepare and bring it in.

CONSOLIDATED FUND (APPROPRIATION) BILL

Mr. Stephen Timms accordingly presented a Bill to authorise the use of resources for the service of the years ending with 31st March 2004 and 31st March 2005 and to apply certain sums out of the Consolidated Fund to the service of the years ending with 31st March 2004 and 31st March 2005; and to appropriate the supply authorised in this Session of Parliament for the service of the years ending with 31st March 2004 and 31st March 2005: And the same was read the first time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed. Explanatory notes to be printed. [Bill 81].

PREVENTION OF TERRORISM BILL (PROGRAMME) (NO. 3)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order 83A(6) (Programme motions),
	That the following provisions shall apply to the Prevention of Terrorism Bill for the purpose of supplementing the Orders of 23rd February 2005 (Prevention of Terrorism Bill (Programme)) and 28th February 2005 (Prevention of Terrorism Bill (Programme) (No. 2))
	Consideration of Lords Amendments
	1. Any Message from the Lords may be considered forthwith without any Question being put.
	2. Proceedings on consideration of any Lords Amendments which may be received shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion three hours after their commencement or at the moment of interruption at this day's sitting, whichever is the later.
	Subsequent stages
	3. Any further Messages from the Lords may be considered forthwith without any Question being put.
	4. The proceedings on any further Message from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement.[Mr. Jim Murphy.]
	The House divided: Ayes 336, Noes 226.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Orders of the Day
	  
	Prevention of Terrorism Bill

Lords amendments considered.

Madam Deputy Speaker: I must inform the House that a message has been brought from the Lords as follows. The Lords agree to the Prevention of Terrorism Bill with amendments, to which they desire the agreement of the Commons. Copies of the Lords amendments are available in the Vote Office.

Alan Beith: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. It appears that the House will not have access to a document that is relevant to Lords amendment No. 42, which is one of the amendments that you have selected for debate this afternoon. That document is the draft rules that the Lord Chancellor would impose on the High Court under the provisions of the amendment. The document exists and has been shown to various people on a consultative basis. I see no reason why it could not be made available to Members generally because of its extreme relevance to the matter under discussion. Could you encourage Ministers to make it available? When a power to make rules is being introduced, if those rules already exist in draft form the House is normally given the details. A Minister from the Lord Chancellor's Department is present, as is the Leader of the House. Perhaps they might assist you by indicating that they could make the document available.

Madam Deputy Speaker: I must inform the right hon. Gentleman that I have no knowledge of the point of order that he has raised with the Chair.

Oliver Heald: Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I understood that it was the correct principle in the Chamber that if a document is referred to by a Minister and it is a state paper, it should be made available to the House for debate. Clearly, if it is referred to in an amendment, it is obviously being referred to by a Minister, so in those circumstances would you rule that a state paper, such as the draft rules that are to apply in the High Court in respect of a provision before us, should be made available? After all, it is an odd proceeding that we are having on the Bill, and if documents are available why on earth should we not have them? You will remember that it was the Lord Chancellor's Department that let us down so very badly over the Mental Capacity Bill, when documents were made available not to all Members of the House, but only to some Members. Is it not time for an end to this and for the document to be made available now?

Douglas Hogg: Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The amendment that stands in my name, which calls for due process, has been selected. The draft rules may touch on the territory covered by my amendment, in which case the House needs to see the draft rules before it can seriously consider my amendment.

Madam Deputy Speaker: As I said earlier, I have no knowledge of the matter and do not know whether the document is a state paper, but Ministers on the Treasury Bench have heard what has been said. The right hon. and learned Gentleman's latter point may well be pursued in the course of the debate.
	I inform the House that all Lords amendments, and amendments to those amendments, will be included in the scope of the debate.

Clause 1
	  
	Power to Make Control Orders

Lords amendment: No. 1.

Charles Clarke: I beg to move, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Madam Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments (a) to (c) thereto, Lords amendments Nos. 2 to 5, Lords amendment No. 6 and Government motion to disagree, Lords amendment No. 7, Lords amendment No. 8, Government motion to disagree and amendment (a), Lords amendment No. 9 and Government motion to disagree, Lords amendments Nos. 10 and 11, Lords amendments Nos. 12 and 13 and Government motions to disagree, Lords amendment No. 14, Lords amendment No. 15 and Government motion to disagree, Lords amendment No. 16 and Government amendments (a) to (g) thereto, Lords amendment No. 17, Government motion to disagree and Government amendments (a) to (f) to the words so restored to the Bill, Lords amendments Nos. 18 to 21, Lords amendment No. 22 and Government motion to disagree, Lords amendment No. 23 and Government amendment (a) thereto, Lords amendments Nos. 24 to 26, Lords amendment Nos. 27 and 28 and Government motions to disagree, Lords amendments Nos. 29 and 30, Lords amendment Nos. 31 and 32 and Government motions to disagree, Lords amendment No. 33, Government motion to disagree and Government amendments (a) to (c) in lieu, Lords amendments Nos. 34 to 36, Lords amendment No. 37 and Government motion to disagree, Government amendments (a) to (o) in lieu of Lords amendments Nos. 8, 9, 12, 13, 15, 17, 22, 28 and 37, Lords amendments Nos. 38 to 40 and Government motions to disagree, Lords amendment No. 41, Lords amendment No. 42, Government motion to disagree and Government amendments (a) to (c) in lieu, and Lords amendment No. 43.

Charles Clarke: There has already been a substantial debate and I intend to address four key issues. First, who should make control orders and are the procedures fair? Secondly, what are the prospects for prosecution in any of the cases in which a control order is being considered? Thirdly, what should be the burden of proof in relation to any of those control orders? Fourthly, should those powers bein the colloquialsunseted, so that they expire at some given point in the future? I shall take each of those four key points in turn, which will deal with the bulk of the Lords amendments, and I shall deal with other points in my winding-up remarks.

Simon Hughes: Will the Secretary of State allow me?

Charles Clarke: No, not at this stage.
	On the first pointwho should make control orders and are the procedures fairthe Government still believe that there are three reasons why the Secretary of State should make the orders. First, the protection of national security is the responsibility of the Government. Secondly, there is no legal or constitutional principle that the Secretary of Statethe Executivecannot make such orders, and there is nothing in the law or in the European convention on human rights that requires the judiciary to make such orders. Thirdly, making control orders requires not only an examination of factual matters, but an analysis of the overall security situation and assessments of the risks posed by a particular individual and of what measures are necessary and appropriate to meet those risks in order to prevent that individual from continuing to carry out his or her terrorist-related activity.
	That requires the careful sifting of a wide range of intelligence material. Inferences must be drawn, evaluations must be made of the weight to be placed on what is often a mass of small pieces of information that have been brought together and painstakingly checked against each other, and an assessment must be made of the impact of those things upon national security. In the past, Governments of all parties have taken the view that the Secretary of State is better placed than the courts to make assessments related to the national interest.
	That said, I have listened carefully to all that has been said in this House, particularly from the Government Benches in another place and elsewhere. I wholly understand the concerns of those who want greater judicial involvement in the order-making process, so that the rights of those made subject to such orders are properly considered and protected and that the measures imposed on them are appropriate and proportionate. That is why, in relation to derogating control orders, I said in Committee that the Government would introduce amendments in another place so as to provide for derogating control orders to be made by a judge of the High Court on an application by the Secretary of State. That was in recognition of the fact that derogating orders would be the most serious orders because they were the ones that would impose obligations which amounted to a deprivation of liberty.
	The order-making procedure for derogating control orders that I propose is set out in the amendments before this House. In summary, the security services and the police will put together the case for an order and identify the measures they think necessary to prevent the individual in question from continuing to carry out terrorist-related activities. The Home Secretary or other Secretary of State will then look at the case and as part of that processI want to emphasise this pointask whether the police, in consultation with the prosecuting authorities, have considered whether there is a realistic prospect of prosecuting the individual for terrorist or other offences.
	If the Home Secretary or other Secretary of State thinks that the test for making a derogation order is made, an application will be made, ex parte, to the High Court for the court to make the order. If the court thinks that there is material which, if not disproved, is sufficient to justify the order being made, it will make the order and refer it immediately for a full inter partes hearing as quickly as possible. At each stage, the court will be able to look at all the material relevant to the case and to examine witnesses. At the full hearing, the defence will have the open material in a Secretary of State's case. The person who is to be subject to the order will be represented at the full hearing by the legal representative of his choice in open sessions and by a special advocate in closed sessions. The special advocate will have access to all the closed material.
	The court's judgment will be in two halvesopen and closedand the subject of the order will see the court's open judgment.

Alan Beith: The Home Secretary may not have had the opportunity to look at the evidence given by the Attorney-General to the Constitutional Affairs Committee yesterday, which has been published today. It was clear from that evidence that the special advocate procedure needs to be improved in various ways to enable advocates to have the assistance they need and to give them a means of communicating with the defendant on matters that he might be able to refute if he knew what was being alleged. Does the Home Secretary have anything to say about the Government's thinking on that?

Charles Clarke: The right hon. Gentleman is correct. Indeed, I said in Committee and confirm again now that Lord Carlile made a number of recommendations in relation to that in his review of the procedure. My right hon. Friend the Attorney-General has also made such recommendations, which I believe that he discussed with the Select Committee to which the right hon. Gentleman refers. I can confirm, as did my noble Friend the Attorney-General, that we believe that there are aspects of the procedure that need to be improved, and that is the process that he set out yesterday in his evidence to the Committee.

David Trimble: The Home Secretary is dealing with the procedures in court. Can he go into detail about the extent to which he has consulted with judges on those procedures, and is he absolutely sure that they are willing to operate this system? I recollect that when something similar was proposed in Northern Ireland many years ago, the judges there made it clear that they would not operate a system of that nature.

Charles Clarke: I have had discussions with some judges. My noble Friend the Lord Chancellor has had specific discussions with judges, including in Northern Ireland, on precisely the questions that the right hon. Gentleman raises. My understanding is that judges are ready to carry out the will of Parliament in these matters and to carry this throughalthough it is true, as I said in Committee and have said elsewhere, that some of the most senior judges in the land have their doubts about whether this is the most appropriate process. That was one of the principal reasons why I was concerned at earlier stages of the debate not to give way on the arguments about judicial decision-making in this area. I was aware that some very senior judges had concerns about these matters. However, I am clear that their view is that they will carry out the will of Parliament, as they rightly should.

Kenneth Clarke: The Home Secretary briefly referred to the prospect of prosecution as an alternative to the process that we are considering. In the past, he has agreed that, when possible, prosecution is preferable, as in the case of the shoe bomber. Do I understand him correctly that the key consideration will be whether the police and the prosecuting authorities, having been asked by the Home Secretary to examine the matter, believe that prosecution is preferable or possible? Is not that open to the danger that they will decide that some evidence is a bit thin, some witnesses are a bit unreliable, there is plenty of suspicion and therefore a more certain outcome could be secured if they go for the procedure for which the measure provides? Although I accept that some people cannot be prosecuted, would it not be better to ask a judge to consider whether the case should be proceeded with in the way that we are discussing, or sent back to the prosecuting authorities to bring an ordinary prosecution?

Charles Clarke: The right hon. and learned Gentleman used the words preferable and possible. Our position is clear. It has been clearly set out and I confirm it today: it is always preferable to prosecute. In the Gloucester shoe bombing case that he mentioned, and in other cases, prosecution is best way in which to proceed. The Home Secretary will seek advice on whether it is possible to prosecute, but I emphasise that it will always be preferable to do so.
	The right hon. and learned Gentleman asked whether I believed that it was appropriate for a judge to decide whether a prosecution should take place. The House would move down a dangerous path if we suggested that, above and beyond the responsibilities that the proposals give judges, we should give them the power to decide whether a prosecution was appropriate. I believe that it is rightly for the Executivethe Secretary of State in the circumstances that we are consideringto make a decision, based on advice.

Mark Oaten: Is it now the Home Secretary's position that he is prepared to consider circumstances in which defendants could hear the charge against them in closed session? Does he acknowledge that even if we have judges in place, on matters of fact defendants should be able at least to make their case against that fact?

Charles Clarke: I have not concluded my comments on derogated control orders. I believe that the rest of my remarks will cover the hon. Gentleman's question, but I shall come back to him if he feels that they have not.

Vera Baird: I want to revert to the question of special advocates. Two things need to be done. First, defendants in such cases typically will not even talk to special advocates because they are appointed by the Solicitor-General, who is close to the Attorney-General who sometimes opposes the applications. Is it not possible for a special advocates list of security-cleared barristers to be drawn up so that defendants can pick their own?
	Secondly, special advocates need to be able to consult their clients to get instructions after they have seen the intelligence material. Is it not possible for a discussion to take place between the special advocate and the judge, in the hope that some questions can be asked without posing a danger to intelligence, thus giving the defendant a fairer crack of the whip?

Charles Clarke: My hon. and learned Friend has made two perfectly appropriate proposals: first, that the defendant should have a better choice of special advocate to represent him or her; and secondly, that the defendant should have more information about the hearing as it proceeds. Both are precisely the sort of proposal to which I referred in response to the right hon. Gentleman for the north-east of England[Hon. Members: Berwick-upon-Tweed.] I believe that not quite Scotland is the place. The proposals are helpful and can be tackled in the dialogue that was mentioned a second ago.
	I believe that the procedure that I have outlined is appropriate, given the seriousness of derogating orders, and that it meets the concerns that were expressed in the House for judicial involvement in their making. Hon. Members will note that there could be a gap in time between my applying for a derogating control order and the court's making it. It is possible that, in that short time, the subject of the proposed order could be tipped off or disappear because he had made travel arrangements. I therefore included in the Bill a power for the police to arrest and detain an individual pending the outcome of a court's consideration of an application for an order and, if made, pending it being served.

William Cash: Will the Home Secretary give way?

Charles Clarke: Not at the moment. The power of detention lasts for a maximum of 48 hours in the first instance. The court can extend that for up to a further 48 hours. I do not anticipate that it will be used often, but we should not allow the purpose of the order to be thwarted by the disappearance of its subject in the interim.
	The proposals fulfil the commitment that I made to hon. Members in Committee to introduce changes in derogating control orders. They are reflected in the Lords amendments that are now before us.

William Cash: I believe that the Home Secretary has to have prime position with regard to the question of whether an executive action against terrorist suspects is involved and has to be sustained. Does he accept that the mess that has been created by the Bill has been the result of our accepting the European convention on human rights, which is at the heart[Interruption.]

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The scope of this debate is quite wide, but hon. Members must speak to the amendments on the Order Paper.

Charles Clarke: The whole House will admire the persistence with which the hon. Gentleman makes his purblind case.I strongly believe that, in relation to the Bill and to other issues more generally, the Human Rights Act 1998 represents a major step forward in the structure of law in this country, and that it has benefited people in this country. The difficult questions that have to be resolvedand they are difficulton the balance between national security and liberty have been assisted by the Act, by the work of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and by the discussions that we have had in the House. I pay tribute to hon. Members on both sides of the House who have played a role in ensuring that we get better scrutiny of these difficult issues. I have concluded very carefully that the protections afforded to the individual in the legislation that we are proposing, which follows the Human Rights Act, are vastly superior to any protections that existed in any legislation when the Conservatives were in government. I acknowledge that there are issues still to be addressed, but let us not hide the progress that has been made.

Dominic Grieve: I note that the Government are seeking to reverse Lords amendment No. 40, which provides for fairness in the process, in compliance with article 6 of the European convention on human rights. Why are the Government seeking to do that if they intend these procedures to be compliant?

Charles Clarke: I shall come to that amendment later in my speech, and I shall deal with the hon. Gentleman's question then.
	I come now to non-derogating control orders. Colleagues in the House of Commons and in the other place have suggested that the High Court should make non-derogating control orders, as well as derogating control orders, and have amended the Bill accordingly. Again, I have considered the matter carefully and I understand the strong opinions that have been expressed. I remain of the view that these orders are different in nature from derogating orders, but I accept that some measure of judicial involvement in the process is necessary and desirable.
	My amendments, which I laid before the House this morning, therefore provide that the Secretary of State must apply to the High Court for permission to make a non-derogating order, save where urgent action is required. I shall explain a little more about what I mean by urgent action in a moment. The normal process for making non-derogating control orders will therefore work in the following way. The Security Service and the police will put a case together, as I have already described. If the Secretary of State thinks that the test is met, an application to the High Court for leave to make the order will be made. If the court agrees that the Secretary of State has a case, it will give the Secretary of State permission to make the order, and the order will be made. The Secretary of State will then refer the order to the court, which will arrange for a full hearing to take place as soon as possible thereafter. If the court refuses leave, the order will not be made.
	At the full hearing, the court will consider all the material before it, examine witnesses, and so on. It will be able to hear the case in both open and closed sessions. As with derogating control orders, the subject will have access to the open material, and his or her interests will be represented by the counsel of his or her choice in open session, and by a special advocate in closed session under the special advocate procedure. I acknowledge the points raised by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) about trying to improve that process. Again, the subject of the order will have access to the open judgment.

David Winnick: As someone who broadly supports the Bill, I should like to remind the House that this is the first anniversary of the atrocities that occurred in Madrid. Will my right hon. Friend explain why, when some of us who are in favour of the Bill pressed for this measure to be included last week, he absolutely refused to do so? That is why quite a number of us voted against the Government. Why has he now conceded to the Lords when he should have conceded to us last week? It is quite obvious that what he is now proposing is right and justified, and that it is what so many of us were urging him to do last week.

Charles Clarke: I am delighted by and grateful for my hon. Friend's ringing endorsement of my proposal. In candour, there are two reasons why I have changed my position since the debate last week.
	First, I believed that it was important to have an urgency procedure, which I shall set out. The direct proposal considered by the House last week did not have such an urgency procedure and there was a risk that certain people to whom it might be necessary to apply a control order would no longer be there.
	Secondly, I set out last week, and again today, that I do not feel that judicial involvement at the first stage, in the way that is suggested, is necessarily the best way to proceed. I acknowledge, however, the strength of opinion both in this place in last week's vote and in the other place. That is a necessary process of parliamentary discussion as it moves forward. I have therefore taken account of that. I could take the course of stating my position and never changing it under any circumstances, but that would not be the right way of dealing with such matters. We are seeking some consensus on this legislation and that is why I have changed my view.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: What concerns me is the idea that the proposal is in some way a concession. Is it not right that the power of the court is expressly limited to the power of judicial review? If that is the case, the court has no overriding jurisdiction over matters of factit is limited to law and procedure. The Home Secretary knows that very well. Why has that not been brought out?

Charles Clarke: I will come to the points on judicial review in a moment.
	On derogating control orders, my hon. and learned Friend is wrong. The proposals on derogating control orders and judicial involvement relate entirely to the judgment on matters of fact to which he refers. On non-derogating control orders, it is not the case that judicial review does not have powerit certainly does. I will come to that in a moment.
	On urgency, there may be urgent cases in which waiting for permission from the court is not an option. In such circumstances, we need to take action immediately. I propose that the Secretary of State should be able to make the order immediately. The Secretary of State would immediately have to certify the urgency of the case on the order, and it would then take effect immediately. When such an urgent procedure is used, the Secretary of State must refer the order immediately to the court for confirmation within seven days. If it is confirmed, the court will then make arrangements for a full hearing.
	I have considered carefully whether urgency can be defined in the Bill and I am advised that an exhaustive list could not be produced. The procedure will rarely be used. The circumstances for use will most likely be when the subject seems likely to disappear before permission could be obtained because he or she had been tipped off or had made arrangements to travel. In case it has been forgotten, I remind the House that that was a specific problem in December 2001, just after 9/11, when a few suspects disappeared just before the part 4 powers came into force. That is a description of what has actually happened rather than of something that is entirely hypothetical.
	We cannot use the arrest and detention power provided in relation to derogating control orders because we have not derogated and do not intend to derogate now. In any event, that power would not be available in relation to non-derogating orders. I believe that the urgency procedure that I have outlined fills the gap. The subject of the order will be able to challenge before the court whether the case was urgent and the use of the urgent procedure will be included in the quarterly reports that the Secretary of State makes to Parliament on use of the control order powers in the period in question, so the whole House will be able to examine the extent to which the urgency procedures have been used.

Chris Smith: Can I press my right hon. Friend further on the court procedure to examine subsequently the urgent decision that he has made? Under his amendment, the court can consider whether the Secretary of State's decision was obviously flawed. In making that decision, can the court consider not just the process whereby the Secretary of State reached his decision, but the full facts that he had in front of him?

Charles Clarke: The short answer is yes. The judicial review principles, which have been well developed over a considerable period, particularly since the passing of the Human Rights Act 1998, are fairly clear. They mean, first, that the court can consider matters of fact and not simply points of law. That is relevant to my right hon. Friend's question. The court will look at all the material relating to and underpinning the Home Secretary's case and ask questions about the decisions made on what should happen next.
	Judicial review is concerned with reviewing whether the decision maker could properly make the decision that he made, but I think it entirely wrong to characterise it as a process concerned only with law and procedure. Even before the Human Rights Act 1998, courts on judicial reviews would, where appropriate, look at the facts to establish whether they could support the decision reached.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: What the Home Secretary is saying is legal heresy, but if it is correct and the court can look at all that, why is it necessary to restrict it to the provisions of judicial review?

Charles Clarke: It is not being restricted to the provisions of judicial review. The fact is that we have a different level of process above the derogating line from that below it, and that is how it should be.

John Denham: Will my right hon. Friend confirm, or otherwise, that under subsection (6) of his amendment the court will consider not just whether the Secretary of State was justified in wanting to make a non-derogating order, but whether the measures proposed were right? Will the court be able to consider whether the actions proposed are proportionate to the case being put, not simply whether there should be an order at all?

Charles Clarke: Yes. The specifics can and, I am sure, will be examined in terms by the court in such cases. When I reach the appropriate point in my speech, I will deal with my right hon. Friend's point about prosecution issues, which he has said throughout should be properly addressed.

Several hon. Members: rose

Charles Clarke: I will not give way again at this stage. I must make some more progress first.
	Let me deal next with the issue of those currently detained under the part 4 powers. My amendment also allows me to make a non-derogating control orderwithout leave from the courtagainst the current part 4 detainees, subject to the requirement that I must refer the case to the courts immediately for confirmation of the orders within seven days, as in the general criteria that I set out.
	The courts have already considered and determined that there are grounds for suspecting each of the individuals concerned of being involved in terrorism and that they pose a real threat to national security. It is very important to the protection of national security that we take immediate action in respect of them, so that they can be controlled immediately on their release from detention under the part 4 powers. Any orders made against the current part 4 detainees must be referred immediately to the High Court for confirmation. If they are confirmed, the court will make arrangements for a full hearing of the detainees' cases as soon as possible thereafter.
	I believe that the changes that I have made in relation to judicial involvement in the process, and the way in which I have responded to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews), reflect a strong opinion in both Houses of Parliament. I hope that they will enable many to accept that the processes that I am introducing will meet the concerns that have been expressed.

David Trimble: I apologise if I have not read the amendment correctly. I have had limited time in which to read it.
	Points have been raised about the application of the judicial review approach. The court's supervision of non-derogating control orders is tied to the determination of
	what constitutes a flawed decision.
	The court
	must apply the principles applicable on an application for judicial review.
	Under subsection (2) (b),
	the court may give that permission unless it determines that that decision is obviously flawed.
	That suggests to me that the court has a discretion quite apart from the issue of whether the decision is obviously flawed. The judicial review principles apply to that, but the use of the word may implies that the court has a discretion and that, even if it concludes that the decision is obviously flawed, it may decide not to grant permission. That would give the courts a very wide power to refuse permission. Is my construction of the amendment correct?

Charles Clarke: I am thinking very carefully about what the right hon. Gentleman said, and I was nodding as he described the situation because his description was right. For the reasons that I set out earlier, the principles of judicial review are wide and will be applied to individual cases, as I said to my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham). However, although the general point made by the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) was right, I am not sure that the conclusion of his intervention, in which he considered the wider situation, was right.

Kenneth Clarke: The hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) is still in practice and I am not, but I was at the receiving end of quite a lot of judicial reviews in my time in office, and it seems to me that a rather startling explanation has been given of the processes involved. Surely there are many cases in which a judge does not overturn the Secretary of State's decision, even though he personally disagrees with the Secretary of State about its merits and would not have taken it on the evidence before him. The judge lets the decision go ahead if he decides that it was within the power of the Secretary of State, that he followed the right processes and that he was entitled to do what he did. A judge will look at the facts only if he concludes that no reasonable Secretary of State, on looking at the facts, could conceivably have come to the opinion originally reached. That is not a full judicial processit is wholly biased in favour of the Secretary of State's decision going ahead. There is no reason for having different processes for the lesser decisions and for the higher ones.

Charles Clarke: With great respect to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, I am not sure who would win the contest between him and the Leader of the Opposition concerning whose decisions were most often overturned by the courts.

Kenneth Clarke: I was overturned twice.

Charles Clarke: I beg the right hon. and learned Gentleman's pardon: the Leader of the Opposition beats him handsomely in that regard. The fact is that, since the right hon. and learned Gentleman was Home Secretary, the Human Rights Act 1998 has changed the way in which the judicial process operates in such cases. The answer that I gave earlier is an accurate description of the way in which the judicial review works.

Several hon. Members: rose

Charles Clarke: I will not give way.
	I turn to the second issue relating to the amendments from the other place, which is consulting the police on the realistic prospect of prosecution before and after a control order is made. In practice, the police and relevant prosecuting authorities consult extensively on every terrorist arrest to see whether there is any possibility of prosecution. The Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales, for example, considers all the material and decides whether there is a basis for a successful prosecution, and whether such a prosecution is in the public interest.
	Submissions to the Home Secretary on individual cases for control orders will always include, as they have done under the part 4 cases, written advice on prosecution. Prosecution is always our first option and, as we discussed earlier, that has been demonstrated in a number of cases, such as that involving the shoe bomber from Gloucester. I have taken account of what has been said in this House and elsewhereI have taken particular note of the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchenand we are looking at whether we can introduce new offences that will increase the number of successful prosecutions of suspected terrorists.
	I recognise Members' concern that the Bill should require me to explore with the police whether there are realistic prospects of a prosecution in any given case before making, or applying for, a control order, and I am ready to do so. My amendments therefore require the Secretary of State to consult the policeat the level of chief officer of the relevant forcebefore making or applying for a control order, on whether there is a prospect of the individual concerned being prosecuted for a terrorist offence.
	The new provisions also require the policein consultation with the relevant prosecuting authority, where appropriateto keep such matters under review once an order has been made. I do not believe that the existence of a control order will preclude successful prosecution at a later date. I remind the House that two of those certified under the part 4 powers currently in place were subsequently charged and successfully prosecuted for terrorist-related offencesan indication that we continue to deal with these matters directly.

John Denham: Will my right hon. Friend confirm whether, under his proposals, the response from the chief constable and, where appropriate, the prosecuting authorities concerning whether the case in question was prosecutablepresumably, it would not bewould be part of the material evidence given to the court and would be available to the judge? In other words, there would clearly be judicial scrutiny of the fact that the prosecution had been considered by the relevant authorities and could not be taken further.

Charles Clarke: That could certainly be put in front of the court in the way that my right hon. Friend suggests. It would then be necessary for the court to take note of the fact that an assertion had been made by the Secretary of State about the prosecution route.

David Kidney: I tabled amendments last week that would have required my right hon. Friend to consult the Director of Public Prosecutions before a control order was made or applied for. Will he confirm that Lords amendment No. 16 does not require that and that it is the Government's amendment (d) that introduces it rather than the Lords amendment itself?

Charles Clarke: My hon. Friend is entirely correct and I can tell the House that it was his intervention, and that of one or two others, that convinced me that this was the right course for the Government to follow. [Interruption.] What I am saying is quite right.

Dominic Grieve: It would be helpful if the Home Secretary clarified the nature of the amendments that he has tabled to Lords amendment No. 16, which provides for a mechanism of consultation that he is now seeking to amend further.

Charles Clarke: I do not think that I am seeking to amend it further. My proposed amendment states:
	Before making, or applying for the making of, a control order against the individual, the Secretary of State must consult the chief officer of the police force about whether there is evidence available that could realistically be used for the purposes of a prosecution of the individual for an offence relating to terrorism.
	It later continues:
	In carrying out his functions by virtue of this section the chief officer must consult the relevant prosecuting authority, but only, in the case of the performance of his duty under subsection (3), to the extent that he considers it appropriate to do so.
	I think that that is as clear as it can be and sets out the position clearly.

David Heath: rose

Charles Clarke: I shall give way for the final time on this part of our proceedings.

David Heath: The answer that the Home Secretary gave to the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) was not entirely correct. Lords amendment No. 8, which deals with the making of control orders, introduces a clause to require that the Director of Public Prosecutions be consulted before an order is made. The right hon. Gentleman is proposing to delete that and, rather curiously, to place his provision in a clause titled Criminal investigations after making of control order. Is not that a rather curious place at which to put it?

Charles Clarke: Perhaps I have not been clear enough, but the fact is that the amendments make it clear, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) explained in his intervention a few moments ago, that, before a control order is made, it is necessary to get the chief police officer's view in consultation with the prosecuting authorities on the possibility of prosecution.

Several hon. Members: rose

Charles Clarke: I am not giving way further on this matter.

Dominic Grieve: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. These are complicated sets of amendments and it is simply not good enough for the Home Secretary to come to the House and express his intentions in loose terminology without marrying or reconciling what he wants to do with the amendments tabled in the other place. On that basis, how can the House reach a proper conclusion or appreciation of what the Government are trying to do?

Madam Deputy Speaker: That is not a point of order, but a point for debate. I remind all hon. Members of what Erskine May says about good temper and moderation, which is something that we should all bear in mind.

Charles Clarke: I am grateful for your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I shall seek to offer both good temper and moderation in my presentation of the case.
	The third point that the House of Lords put to us relates to the burden of proofa serious matter on which there has been substantial debate. I want to start from the reality of what control orders are. They are preventive orders, not punishments. They are designed to prevent future atrocities from being committed, not to punish for what has been done in the past.

Bill Wiggin: Will the Home Secretary give way on that?

Charles Clarke: No, I will not.
	The orders require an assessment of the overall security situation, of the risk posed by particular individuals and of what measures are necessary and proportionate to meet those risks. The Lords amendments suggest that the balance of probabilities is the right test for determining whether the subject of an order is, or has been, involved in terrorism. The Lords acknowledged that that would be a high test, and the Government do not believe that it would be appropriate for all control orders.

David Davis: The Home Secretary says that the control orders are not intended to be punishments. Does he accept that they can inflict huge harm through restraining movement, communication, contact, association and many other things that are normally considered to be human rights in this country?

Charles Clarke: Of course I accept that. I cannot recall whether the right hon. Gentleman attended our debate in Standing Committee on this matter, but the distinction between restriction and deprivation of liberty is very important. Each of these proposals amounts to a restriction of liberty, but the central message of the Law Lords' judgment on the part 4 powers is that whatever we do must be proportionate. We must deal with any perceived threat proportionately, and that is what the control orders will do. Without them, we have no way to offer the proportionate control counselled by the Law Lords.

Nick Palmer: If a judge concludes that it is probable that I will join a gang of drunks to cause trouble in central Nottingham, he can impose an antisocial behaviour order to prohibit me from associating with them. However, does my right hon. Friend agree that the absurd result of the Lords amendments is that, even if the judge concluded that I wished to associate with a gang to blow up central Nottingham, he would be powerless to intervene?

Charles Clarke: I would not make that exact comparison, but my hon. Friend's central point is correct. The burden of proof is critical when it comes to considering what control order is being applied in a given circumstance.

Clare Short: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Charles Clarke: No, not at this stage.
	Making control orders involves assessing the threat posed by a person's past conduct and the risk of further such conduct in the future. That assessment is based on intelligence material, as opposed to evidence that can be adduced in court. A determination must then be made of what controls are needed to meet the threat and mitigate the risk.
	I propose that the test should be reasonable suspicion, which I believe is better when analysing intelligence material and drawing inferences from it. The Special Immigration Appeals Commission and the Court of Appeal have both accepted that that is the right course to take in respect of the part 4 powers currently in place under immigration legislation.
	For example, Lord Justice Laws argued that the nature of the subject matter is such that it will usually be impossible to prove past facts that make the case that X is a terrorist. I have said the same on many occasions. Accordingly, a requirement of proof would frustrate the policy, and the objectives of the powers. The target of the policy includes those who belong to loose, amorphous and unorganised groups. The choice of reasonable suspicion is apt to strike that target.
	Nevertheless, we have accepted that balance of probabilities should be the test for derogating control orders. That is because the subjects of those orders will be deprived of their liberty. That goes back to the proportionality point that I made in response to the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis).
	For the reasons given, I do not think that the balance of probabilities test should apply to non-derogating orders. My amendments therefore provide that the test to determine whether, for derogating control orders, X is, or has been, a terrorist should be the balance of probabilities. For non-derogating control orders, the test should be reasonable suspicion.
	I am advised that a higher test would mean that some control orders could not be sought, and that potentially dangerous individuals could simply slip away. I am not prepared to operate in such circumstances.

Mark Oaten: Does the Home Secretary concede that even the lesser control orders affect people's liberty, as they tell people where they can travel and work? He has conceded that a judge must decide on those control orders, so does he accept that the same standard of proof is needed for the orders about which he has just been speaking? It is hardly fair to say that the balance of probabilities is a high test, given that that could be 51 per cent. against 49 per cent. Surely the same standards should apply for all control orders?

Charles Clarke: First, I acknowledge that, as we have said from the outsetthe hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) and I agreethe balance between security and individual liberty is at the core of this discussion. Therefore, proportionality in the standard of proof and the type of control order also relate to those matters. There is not an absolute herealthough some may say that there isbut a question of balance.
	The legislation, including the standard of proof, intends to address those points. One of his hon. Friends said on Radio 5 today,
	The most important right is the right to life and I will be brutally frank with you and tell you that if this legislation is not passed there is a marginally increased likelihood of some sort of terrorist attack killing a number of our citizens. The difficulty is weighing that up against the risk to people's liberty who may be thrown into gaol without any real cause but simply on some sort of suspicion.
	That is the sort of issue that we must address and our proposals do precisely that.

Richard Burden: I am still confused about something. If we assume that the most dangerous suspects are those who could be subject to derogated control orders and that their cases should be subject to the higher standard of proofthat is, on the balance of probabilitieswhy should less dangerous suspects be subject to a lesser standard of proof, particularly given my right hon. Friend's welcome movement today in saying that under non-derogating orders the court can consider facts and not just the Home Secretary's judgment?

Charles Clarke: The key point is the one I made a moment ago. It is important to acknowledge that there is a distinction between deprivation of liberty and not depriving someone of liberty. That has been important in terms of the judgment of the European convention on human rights and it is important in practical terms and the extent to which people are controlled in those circumstances. It is true that there are issues of restriction of liberty at a lesser level than deprivation of liberty, but my argument is that those are different cases and should be dealt with in the proportionate way I described.

Lynne Jones: My right hon. Friend may be surprised to learn that I am sympathetic to his argument on this point, but I do not understand why the Government disagree with Lords amendment No. 6, which he did not mention. It makes provision for someone who is subject to a control order to have access to supplies of food and personal necessities. Why do the Government disagree with the Lords?

Charles Clarke: I shall come to that, but the short answer is that those requirements are met and the Lords amendment is unnecessary to secure what my hon. Friend seeks to achieve. I shall speak about that in more detail in a moment.
	I have made it clear that the new procedures are fair and ensure early judicial involvement. In non-derogating control orders, the judge may refuse leave to make the order or quash an order that has been made under the urgency procedure if he feels that the test is not met. In derogating control orders, the court makes the order. In both cases there will be automatic referral for a full hearing of the court. In non-derogating orders, the court will apply judicial review principles. In derogating control orders, the court will decide the case on its merits. I do not accept that judicial review principles are not appropriate. As I said, the court has been developing those principles since before the introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998. I believe that the issues that have been raised create fairness in the system.
	A number of colleagues have asked whether those issues and approaches are fair to the defence.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: Will the Home Secretary give way?

Charles Clarke: No, I will not.
	The subject of the orderthe defendantwill have access to the advocate of his choice in open sessions and will be represented by a special advocate in closed sessions. The courts have accepted that that is the fairest system possible, given the need to protect sensitive material.
	As I said to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar, the Government are looking to widen the pool of special advocates to give the subject of the order greater choice. SIAC-type procedures will be followed in control order proceedings. The rules to be made by the Lord Chancellor or the Lord President in Scotland in the first instance, and thereafter by the relevant rules committees, will ensure that. We need to establish those rules quickly, and once the first set of rules is made, they will be made thereafter by the appropriate rules committee. The rules will be in place immediately, and there will need to be a vote in both Houses of Parliament if they are to remain in force beyond 40 sitting days.
	The cases for control orders will, as now with the part 4 powers, be prepared extremely carefully. The Secretary of State will put forward a balanced case to the court that will include both material that makes his case and exculpatory material that undermines it. The courts will expect, and rightly demand, a high standard of fairness, which is as it should be. Much of the material will be sensitive and not capable of being shown to the subject of the order and his lawyer in open session, but it will be available to the court and to the special advocate, part of whose job is to try to secure the widest possible disclosure of material to the subject of the order.

Douglas Hogg: Will the Home Secretary give way?

Charles Clarke: In a moment.
	We are now looking urgently at better training for special advocates

Douglas Hogg: Will the Home Secretary give way?

Charles Clarke: I have said that I will do so in a second. Perhaps the right hon. and learned Gentleman could do me the courtesy of resuming his seat while I continue my speech.
	We are now looking urgently at better training for special advocates, at better support systems for them and at whether they can have greater access to the subject of the order. The aim is to ensure that special advocates can do their job to the best of their ability, but still commensurate with the need to protect sensitive material, sources and techniques.
	I shall now give way to the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg).

Douglas Hogg: How very gracious of the Home Secretary. Will he understand that the special advocate cannot do his job properly, or even at all, unless he can discuss with the detained person the nature of the evidence being deployed against him and obtain his proper instructions on that evidence?

Charles Clarke: That reprises a discussion that we had last week. I think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will confirmif I am wrong, perhaps he will correct methat he totally opposes any control order process of any description.

Douglas Hogg: No, I do not. My position is set out in amendment (a) to amendment No. 8. Provided that there is due process, I will go along with control orders. The problem is that there is no due process. Until there is, I oppose control orders.

Charles Clarke: I am glad that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has made that acknowledgement. It is a change of position, but it is a welcome change of position in the right direction.
	I turn now to the final substantive set of amendments from the Lords, which are on sunsetting.

David Davis: I think that the Home Secretary has misrepresented the views of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg). The Home Secretary should address the question of how a special advocate will deal with an allegation when he is unable to tell the accused enough to enable him to give an alibi, even if that alibi is the absolute and concrete truth. We understand the Home Secretary's motivation, but he should explain to the House of Commons exactly how his proposal will work.

Charles Clarke: The point that the right hon. Gentleman has not fully grasped is that the control order that we propose will be a preventive device to prevent an individual from offering a terrorist threat to the country, in various ways. It will not be a judgment on the facts in the traditional court approach, via a prosecuting rule, on whether a crime has been committed in a particular way. The Government agree that it is superior, where possible, to take the latter course of prosecution, for a variety of reasons. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will accept that I was not seeking to malign his colleague: I thought that I had heard a change from what was said last week. I know that he accepts that in such circumstances, a control order, limited as it may be, could be necessary, and he presses me about the procedures to ensure that the matter is properly carried through.
	The open evidence is disclosed to the appellant and the special advocate at a relatively early stage of the process. That enables the special advocate to discuss it with the appellant before he sees the closed evidence. It is only after seeing the closed evidence that he cannot communicate with the appellant, except in limited circumstances. The closed evidence is thus provided to the special advocate at a later stage. I think that that deals with the situation in a way that protects our national security.

David Davis: The Home Secretary recognised earlier that although control orders might not be intended to punish, there is a strong penal element to them because they would do harm to an individual. Concern about the matter was raised by Ian MacDonald, the special advocate who resigned. He said that sometimes the closed evidence was so different from the open evidence that the charge became different, to all intents and purposes, so the accused was thus incapable of answering it. The scope for a miscarriage of justice is enormous in such circumstances. That is a disaster in itself, but it would also be disastrous for the effectiveness of anti-terrorist orders because it would create a recruiting sergeant and radicalise our opponents.

Charles Clarke: It is important to acknowledge that special advocates have different views on the point that the right hon. Gentleman sets out. Secondly, it is important to appreciate that we are listening carefully to what special advocates have said about procedural issues. That is why I responded at the beginning of the debate to the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-TweedI hope that I got his constituency right on this occasion

Alan Beith: It is in the north-east.

Charles Clarke: The right hon. Gentleman's constituency is indeed in the north-east, or even further north than the north-east, if one can say such a thing.
	There are questions about the special advocate procedure. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar, who is also from the north-east, has consistently and strongly asked me such questions during the passage of the Bill. She and the right hon. Members for Berwick-upon-Tweed and for Haltemprice and Howden are right to say that we need a process that is as fair as possible to appellants. I believe that we are doing that.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Charles Clarke: No, I shall not.
	However, I do not accept that wanting such a process means that we do not need a procedure including special advocates, closed sessions, open sessions and the like. We must judge the right balance to strike.
	I have spoken for a long time, so I want to conclude by talking about the sunset clause. That has been a big issue in the other placeand in this House as well, to an extent. However, with respect, our proposals have not been fully understood. Although I do not make this point in a partisan way, I note that the proposal made by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden on a sunset clause was put forward not during the bilateral conversations that we have been having, but in an open press conference as an attempt to set out a direct position.
	Let me go through the fivepotentially sixstages of review that exist. First, the Home Secretary will be required to report every three months on the existence of control orders. He will have to report to the House publicly on what has happened, how many have been issued and how many were urgent.
	Secondly, the Bill will require the reviewerwho will have a similar function to Lord Carlile in his review of SIAC casesto make a report to Parliament every year on the operation of our proposals. That provision was in the Bill that we introduced in the first place. The report could address all the questions that we are discussing today. As I specifically said earlier, I would ask the reviewer to examine in the next such report the implications of new legislation on prosecution and determine how that matter could be addressed. The report would be entirely independent and frank and would set out any issues raised by judges, courts, Members of Parliament or anyone else.

Robin Cook: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Charles Clarke: No, I will give way when I have finished what I am saying.
	Thirdly, I have tabled a new amendment to provide that the Bill would need to be renewed annually by a vote in each House of Parliament. Such a vote a year from now would be informed by the quarterly control order reports and the report by the special independent reviewer.

Clive Soley: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Charles Clarke: I shall give way in a second.
	Parliament could decide that it did not wish to renew the legislation, for example if the review raised issues showing that it was not working properly. Those three steps are there today and now.
	The fourth stage of the review, which was also in the Bill when it was first published, is that in the event that we have a derogating order in place, which as the House will recall I do not propose at the moment, there would again be an annual vote to renew by both Houses of Parliament. Fifthly, I have acknowledgedI stated it on 26 Januarythat we need new legislation on offences relating to terrorism and we intend, if re-elected, to put such legislation before the House early in the new Parliament. Again, that will be an occasion to address those questions.
	Sixthly and finally, there will bein case it has escaped anybody's attentiona general election in the next 15 months or so. At that general election, it sounds as though one party will be saying, Confirm the legislation, while other parties will be saying, Repeal it, so the people of the country can have a view on that, too. I argue that those six stages add up to a substantial capacity for Parliament, and indeed the people of this country, to review the legislation and to decide to stop it if they so wish.

Dominic Grieve: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Charles Clarke: Not at this moment. I shall give way first to my right hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) and then to my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush (Mr. Soley).

Robin Cook: I warmly welcome the measured and reasonable way in which my right hon. Friend is responding to the anxieties that have been expressed in both Houses of Parliament. Does he agree that one of the advantages of having a year before we renew the measure is that we shall have time for reflection? I put it to him that this contentious legislation would greatly benefit from something like the Newton committee treatment. My right hon. Friend proposes to strike out Lords amendment No. 31, which would set up such a committee. I do not quarrel with that action on the procedure, but I ask my right hon. Friend to reflect on the fact that the principle is sound, and that he might find it helpful a year from now when the measure comes up for renewal to have independent recommendations for improvement to the Act in the light of experience from a broader group than just one reviewer.

Charles Clarke: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for making that point. I agree with him; it is a question of not just the ability to review but, as he implies, the ability to review in an informed way. I think that the process I have put in placethree-monthly reports and an independent reviewis exactly the vehicle by which it will be possible to obtain that informed review. On my right hon. Friend's idea about Privy Counsellors and a committee of that type, I pay respect today, as I have done in the past, to the extremely positive work of Lord Newton and his committee. I also pay tribute to the work of the Intelligence and Security Committee in reviewing such matters, which has been important in this and other areas. I can say to my right hon. Friend that I will certainly look at whether there are better ways to continue the review of this matter and consider what is the right way to proceed. The reason that I was and am against the Lords amendment is that to specify a particular form of review, especially in light of the wide range of information we have at this stage, is overly prescriptive.

Clive Soley: I welcome what my right hon. Friend has just said. I certainly think that is better than a sunset clause. It is important that we recognise that for the past 20 or 30 years, none of us has been happy with the way we have legislated on terrorism. The measure we are discussing today is not as bad as some aspects of the old prevention of terrorism Acts and it is certainly not as bad as the internment Acts. I would very much welcome my right hon. Friend's going a step further to offer talks to the other partiesI know that he cannot commit future Governmentsand they ought to respond positively in terms of the review and come forward with other suggestions as time goes by.

Charles Clarke: I very, very much agree with my hon. Friend and would like to make three points in response to him. First, his first point is not sufficiently appreciated. It is a fact that we are giving greater priority to human rights and civil liberties in these procedures than in any previous type of such legislation. Secondly, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend who, when he led for the Labour Opposition on these matters before we came into office, dealt with the then Government in a universally positive and constructive way. He recognised his responsibility in opposition to deal with such matters responsibly. That is a positive example from which all parties in the House might usefully draw some lessons. Thirdly, I agree that after a general election it would be beneficial to hold conversations of the type that we were referring to. I do not specify a particular form, but with a Parliament stretching in front of us, to try to go back to the old days when Labour was in opposition and we had all-party agreement on such things might be a good way to proceed, and I am certainly ready to act to try to achieve that.

Andrew Bennett: Does my right hon. Friend accept that one of the problems with the House being given an opportunity to vote on an order is that such orders are not amendable and therefore it is not possible for the House to keep part of the Billor part of the Act, as it would then beand to get rid of bits of it in a phased way? It is possible to have a statutory instrument that is amendable. Will he look further at making it possible for us to consider an amendable statutory instrument so that we could shave away parts of the Bill as they became unnecessary?

Charles Clarke: I will think about that proposal, and I accept the weakness of the order system that my hon. Friend describes. That is why the order system that I was referring to for the derogating order was a better way to proceed

Dominic Grieve: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Charles Clarke: I will give way when I have finished what I am saying.
	I acknowledge that there are issues that I will think about in relation to what my hon. Friend says. However, I believe that, if we were to get to the state of affairs with the independent reviewer where the conversations that we have had had taken place and where both Houses of Parliament thought that the current legislation should not continue, that would be precisely the time to discuss what form of legislation should replace the Bill.

Dominic Grieve: I am most grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way. He is aware, and I dare say that he would agree, that the Bill has had to be passed through the House in considerable haste. I do not think that he would disagree with that. It is also very controversial and, as he knows from the debate in the other place and in this House, it has excited a great deal of comment because much of it is draconian and certainly novel in terms of civil liberties in this country. Are those not compelling reasons why there should be a sunset clause? That would make absolutely sure that the House and the Government do their duty properly by allowing the legislation to be considered afresh with the possibility of alternatives being properly aired in the House, rather than, as I fear, the Government simply keeping this going in the medium term, as the Prime Minister says. That is likely to be for many years if they have their way.

Charles Clarke: The hon. Gentleman argues the casethe compelling case, in his languagefor looking at the operation of the legislation in precisely the detailed way that I have described. That is not a compelling argument for including an eight-month sunset clause, which would give no time at all to consider the issue seriously and take it forward.

Several hon. Members: rose

Charles Clarke: I turn finally to the other Lords amendments. The remainder[Interruption.]

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. It is obvious that the Home Secretary is not prepared to give way at the moment.

Charles Clarke: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am acutely aware that I have already taken an hour and seven minutes of the House's time. Other hon. Members will want to speak, and I cannot be accused of not having given way fairly generously during the debate.
	On the remainder of the Lords amendments, I conclude by saying that Lords amendments Nos. 6, 27, 31 and 32 are unnecessary. Lords amendment No. 6 is unnecessary because those who need social security benefits will receive them if they are eligible without provision having to be made in the Billto answer the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones)and a control order must be necessary and proportionate, and one that denied an individual access to food, clothing and sustenance would plainly not be proportionate. The other Lords amendments are unnecessary because, in my view, clause 11 already makes adequate provision for the Bill to be reviewed in the operation of the Act once passed by the processes that I have already described.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: rose

Hon. Members: Give way!

Charles Clarke: In the spirit of fair play, which is my wont, I give way for the final time in the debate to the crusader for liberty who is my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: I am grateful to the Home Secretary. May I just come back briefly? If the Bill ever becomes law and if a review is given to the House when it is reviewed, will he undertake that that review will contain an independent judicial statement on the limitations of judicial review, so that the House is definitely not misled as to the nature of judicial intervention as to fact?

Charles Clarke: The one thing about which I feel absolutely certain is that the chance of an absolutely categorical statement of interpretation of any aspect in law is always unlikely, even from my hon. and learned Friend.

Paul Stinchcombe: The law on judicial review, as stated previously by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) and by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), would have been accurate in 1948, when the Wednesbury case was decided, but that is no longer accurate following the Daly case in the House of Lords, in which it was stated that the day has come when
	it will be . . . widely recognised that . . . Wednesbury . . . was an unfortunately retrogressive decision in English administrative law, in so far as it suggested that there are degrees of unreasonableness and that only a very extreme degree can bring an administrative decision within the legitimate scope of judicial
	review.

Charles Clarke: First, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend's service on the Joint Human Rights Committee; and secondly, I defer to his legal experience. I am not sure whether my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway would also defer to his legal experience.

Si�n Simon: I remind my right hon. Friend of what somebody once said of Cavour, that he loved moderation immoderately. I ask my right hon. Friend not to get carried away with concessions and sunset clauses but to bear in mind over the next couple of days that there remain many Members of this place and a great majority of people outside it who do not want to see all these things that lawyers in this place and the other place have been talking about, who believe that my right hon. Friend was right in the first place and that the country should be protected by elected Members of Parliament and Ministers of the Crown, and not by unelected and unaccountable judges.

Charles Clarke: I am extremely grateful for the moderate way in which my hon. Friend immoderately makes his case. He allows me to conclude by saying that I believe that it is the duty of this elected House to set out the basis of the defence of our national security. I assert that strongly. On that basis, I urge this elected House to support the amendments that I have put in place and to reject the Lords amendments.

David Davis: Listening to the debate has been rather instructive. It is unusual for a debate of this nature to include such principled clashes across the Chamber at this stage of a Bill. I think that it is a reflection of the way in which the Bill has been handled. I am led to read to the House a short extract from the editorial of this morning's edition of The Times, that well-known Conservative newspaper. It reads:
	The humiliating defeats in the Lords on the Prevention of Terrorism Bill are not only an extraordinary setback two months before an expected general election; they are also a telling indictment of the muddle, incompetence and myopia that have characterised the sloppy handling of this vital issue. The defeats are too resounding to be brushed aside by a Government desperate to enact legislation to replace the current detention powers that expire on Monday; with both Lord Irvine of Laird, the former Lord Chancellor and  . . . Lord Condon, one of Britain's most experienced former police chiefs, voting against the measures, the moral weight of opposition makes it clear that Labour is facing its sternest test of how to handle the whole issue of terrorism . . . The inept handling of this Bill . . . has had the worst possible effect. It has politicised an issue that should command a consensus among all responsible MPs to safeguard Britain and its liberties
	I agree.
	The issue of terrorism and the related legislation should command a consensus. I hoped a few weeks ago that we would find a way to get the Government out of the jam that they had created for themselves. However, they appear to have been determined to try to use the Bill as a political weapon. The Prime Minister virtually said as much at questions today. Despite that, I will make one more attempt to appeal to the Government's sense of reason.
	I shall start by highlighting the most important amendments that the Home Secretary talked about today. I welcome his acceptance of the need for judge-led decisions on all the control order matters. It is belatedit should have been in the first draft of the legislationand it certainly would have been put into the Bill if there had been proper Commons scrutiny, as I think was apparent from the comment of the hon. Member for Walsall, North (David Winnick).
	Having listened to the Home Secretary and to interventions by the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), I can see little justification for interfering in the system of judicial control orders, but that is being done by means of the Government amendment to Lords amendment No. 1. The Government have not made the caselistening to the Home Secretary, I did not hear a casefor substituting reasonable suspicion for the balance of probabilities. I shall return to that point in a moment.
	Lords amendment No. 16, which gives primacy to prosecution, is being interfered with by the Government, again for no good reason. Indeed, together with the deletion of Lords amendment No. 18, that interference will have the opposite effect to the one intended by the Home Secretary. Most tellingly, the Government have rejected the Privy Council review process, which alone can show how the legislation will work in practice. When taken with the objection to the sunset clause, that demonstrates a total lack of willingness to heed the anxieties of Members of all parties about the control order system that the Government are introducing, and hardly inspires confidence in assurances that they have given us. The same is true of their refusal to accept Lords amendment No. 38, which requires the Lord Chief Justice to set the rules, and Lords amendment No. 40, which would ensure that the procedure is compatible with the European convention on human rights by ensuring that there is a fair hearing. It is hard to understand why the Government are seeking to delete that amendment, particularly given the answer that the Home Secretary gave my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), the shadow Attorney-General.

Brian Mawhinney: I declare an interest as a member of the Newton committee. Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind the fact that findings of that committee were at considerable odds with what was then Government policy, and are much closer to what is now emerging as Government policy. However, before the door of the Home Office was closed, as we delivered our proposals they were comprehensively rubbished by the previous Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett). We are here today not because of the Newton committee's review but because of the Law Lords. Will my right hon. Friend bear that in mind when he assesses the importance of the review proceduresas opposed to the sunset clauseto which the Government are seeking the agreement of the House?

David Davis: My right hon. Friend has made a very good point. Perhaps I could develop it by discussing the events that have led to this position. The Home Secretary has said several times today alone that the Government had only 12 weeks in which to put the legislation together. That is not true. They were aware for some time that there were fundamental flaws in the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. I do not blame or condemn them for those flaws, as that measure was rushed through in the aftermath of 9/11, so it is understandable that mistakes were made. However, it would not be understandable if they repeated those mistakes. We anticipated the weaknesses and flagged them up. In response, the Government set up the Newton committee, on which my right hon. Friend, to review the operation of the Act, highlight its weaknesses and propose alternatives.
	The Newton committee reported in 2003, and did exactly what it had been asked to do. Before the Home Office door closed, as my right hon. Friend said, its proposals were rubbished. It made a number of sensible proposals, but the Government, apart from rubbishing them, did nothing. We have heard from officials at the Home Office that papers were prepared, but that there was no political direction. Even when it became apparent in October 2004 that the Government were expected to lose the forthcoming House of Lords judgment in December 2004, they did nothing. When the judgment was made, for weeks nothing happened, except that the Government introduced the statutory instrument to renew the old lawthe part 4 provision.
	The Government have tried to represent the Oppositionand there has been more of this todayas being difficult over the Bill. That is blatantly untrue. We have made at least three separate proposals to the Government. First, we offered them the option of extending part 4 of the 2001 Act, which would allow more time to consider a new Bill and new powers to deal with the problem of defending the nation, but for reasons that the Home Secretary gave and that I accepted, they rejected that. On 22 February, therefore, we said that we were willing to back an extension of part 4 with primary legislation to limit the bail conditions that the Special Immigration Appeals Commission can set. In effect, that would guarantee that the control orders outlined by the Home Secretary in the Bill up to and including house arrest would apply to the remaining Belmarsh detainees until properly considered legislation came into effect. That would limit the possible injustice to a small number of people for a short, limited period, but it would also give the Home Secretary the certaintythat was the word he used when speaking to methat he is seeking when dealing with those foreign nationals. But they rejected that too. Finally, we proposed, in addition to other amendments, to approve this fundamentally flawed Bill for a limited period, a sunset clause. Today and before, they rejected that as well.
	One of the purposes of a sunset clause is to enable the Government to evaluate their ability to lock up known terrorists. The 10 to 20 people whom the Home Secretary intends to have placed under a control order, if guilty of terrorism, acts preparatory to terrorism, or acts that the Government think are wrong within the law, should be in prison, not on the street. That is why the Bill must expire and be replaced by legislation that has been properly considered and will allow us to catch terrorists without penalising ordinary people. We believe that such legislation is possible.

Clive Soley: The right hon. Gentleman speaks of seven months. If he has in mind other approaches, including another Act, for example, for acts preparatory to terrorism, quite a lot of background work will be needed between the two Houses. Surely he must accept that renewing the legislation every year would give the Government the flexibility over the next 12 months to do that? It would be a far better approach than a sunset clause, which would mean rushing the work in a way that would be unacceptable.

David Davis: I shall return to some of the hon. Gentleman's points. It strikes me as extraordinary that a Government who force us to consider a Bill in eight days object to having eight and a half months to consider a new Bill. It is self-evidently illogicalI was going to say something ruderan illogical proposal. But we are not starting from year zero. The Newton committee has already reported and largely been ignoredindeed, rubbishedso we have some data already. I am sure other aspects have been considered. If it is a matter of a month here or there, there is no argument. If, instead of 30 November, the Government want to make the target date Christmas, I will happily discuss that with the Home Secretary. That is not the argument.
	We need a principled approach to how we review and renew the Bill. We accept, as Lord Newton's committee does, that there is a clear need for special legislation to deal with the problems that we face today. There is a need, as he said, for specialist counter-terrorism legislation because of the way terrorists operate, which makes them hard to catch and convict, and because of the risks they pose to society, but, as the Newton committee again said,
	counter-terrorist legislation must also contain proper protections for the privacy and liberty of the individual.

John Denham: Can the right hon. Gentleman help the House by saying whether, this time next year, if we had the legislation that he would like to see, it would still contain control orders or measures that are pretty much the same as control orders? If he sees that as part of the package of the future, why does he want a sunset clause, which would bring those measures to an end?

David Davis: I shall come to some of those points shortly. I take the view that in policy as serious as this, the Government should not do what the Americans call load, fire, aim, which means make up one's mind before one sees the facts. The Government need to assess how many people would be affected by control orders. That number changes, depending on the nature of the current law. If the law is widened or extended, if the procedures for using intercept and sensitive evidence are changed, if that evidence can be brought to court, the number of people who are guilty of terrorism but are incapable of being brought to court will go down. The number may go down to zero, but we cannot do that without the evidence necessary. That is one of the reasons why implicit in the idea of a sunset clause was the concept of another unbiased, highly cleared Privy Councillor committee to report back to both Houses of Parliament and give them the data on which to make that important judgment.

William Cash: Does my right hon. Friend accept that a sunset clause is the best way to deal with the practical realities that the House faces? Does he also accept that it is incompatible with the principle that he just enunciated for any future legislation on the prevention of terrorism to be made within the framework endorsed by the Bill, namely the Human Rights Act 1988 and the European convention on human rights?

David Davis: I agree with the first half of my hon. Friend's remarks, butthis may be a sad thingI must deal with the matter in the present reality.
	The sunset clause proposal is the reason why we have offered the Government several serious alternatives. We have said that we would support new offences such as acts preparatory to terrorism or an offence similar to those in America's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations ActRICO laws are very effective in America. We need a sunset clause to allow those matters to be considered properly and, where appropriate, to be passed into law as a substitute for the Bill.

Douglas Hogg: My right hon. Friend has just referred to the law of the United States. Will he remind the House that the fifth amendment to the United States constitution prevents anybody from being held in custody without the due process of law?

David Davis: My right hon. and learned Friend is right. If any country faces a higher risk than us, however, it is the United States, which is coping.
	The Government should accept the recommendations made in the Newton report, such as allowing the use of intercept evidence, which would allow cases to be brought to a court of law with a judge and jury so that people are properly convicted. In order to protect sensitive intelligence and its sources, we propose that a judge should be responsible for assessing the evidence and ensuring that a balanced case is presented. In some of his asides, the Home Secretary has sympathised with that view, but we have heard little of that in today's debate. That recommendation would ensure fairness for the defence while protecting sensitive sources, and such a trial would be conducted by a different judge, normally sitting with a jury. Again, that is likely to happen only if we get a sunset clause.

Huw Irranca-Davies: Because I am not a lawyer, I ask the right hon. Gentleman to excuse me if I am confused. I can see the point of principled objection to control orders, but he seems to be suggesting that, if he were here in a year's time, five control orders would possibly be permissible, 10 would perhaps be permissible, but 20 would not be permissible. Is his objection to control orders based on numbers, as his answers suggest, or on a point of principle?

David Davis: The hon. Gentleman has made a fair point. If he followed yesterday's debate in the upper House, he will have noticed that we did not support the Liberal amendment to ensure that the accused knows all or a large part of the information laid against them. Control orders exist in cases in which one cannot tell the accused everything, but any civilised personcertainly anyone who has read Kafkawould be horrified at somebody going through a process, even if it is meant to be preventive rather than punitive, without knowing the charge against them. It is best to avoid that situation, where it is possible to do so.
	If two or three people are involved, however, it is possible to judge the risk involved in replacing that mechanism with close surveillancethat is possible with two or three people, but not with 200. One can also ask whether that can be done in a civilised way in order to defend our society, without imposing mechanisms that are normally used only in dictatorships. The hon. Gentleman is right that that judgment is based on a clash of principles, but he must understand that basing it on scary comments made on Woman's Hour is not a good way in which to proceed.
	Those things will happen only if we get a sunset clause. First and foremost, the end for the Government must be the imprisonment of those people who are a danger to the country, but in reaching that end, we must be careful not to use means that degrade our constitution and Parliament. This Bill suspends habeas corpus and brings to an end the presumption of innocence in British law. These are massive changes in our citizens' constitutional rights, yet they were rammed through the Commons, the traditional defender of those rights, in one day. The Lords were given three daysI suspect only because the Government cannot dictate the timetable in quite the same draconian way as they can in the Commons.
	Habeas corpus and the presumption of innocence matter in themselves, but they also matter because they have a direct influence on the Bill's effectiveness as an anti-terrorist measure. Take the Government's stand on the level of evidence required. Lords amendment No. 9 proposes the relatively low civil standard of the balance of probabilities. The Government want reasonable suspicion. What is the difference? Who will be caught by one but not the other? The Government's proposal will net people whom they suspect, but are probably not terrorists. I will repeat that, because it is very important. Rejecting the balance of probabilities means that the Government are willing to put a control order on somebody who is probably not a terrorist. That is a formula for not one miscarriage of justice but many. Every miscarriage of justice is a wrong in itself, but in anti-terrorist law every miscarriage of justice is a seed from which anger and resentment growanger and resentment that feed the enemy we are trying to defeat and act as a recruiting sergeant for the evil men who would destroy not just our lives but the institutions, freedoms and beliefs that make our country what it is.

Patrick Cormack: My right hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, but I want to take him back to his point about time. Does he realise that we have now used up more than half the time allocated for this debate? We have heard from the Home Secretary, and we are hearing an excellent speech from my right hon. Friend, but who else will be able to take part adequately?

David Davis: My hon. Friend is right. I am endeavouring to make this a short speech, so I will not take too many more interventions. The Government set this timetable, and I am afraid that when we look back in 25 or 50 years, or when we get to the end of this global emergency, we will wonder why we gave up these things in eight days.

Kenneth Clarke: With great respect, my right hon. Friend is exaggerating the length of time that this House has had to consider the Bill. In the previous debate, we did not have the Bill before uswe had a letter that described what the Bill was going to be like in the other House. The Home Secretary said that he would consult about the possibility of giving us a little more time to consider the Bill when it came back here, yet we have only three hours in total to discuss every Lords amendment, and the Government reject the prospect of coming back to legislate again properly after the election.

David Davis: My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely righthe always catches me out when I am trying to be too reasonable.

John Denham: rose

David Davis: I will make some progress, if the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me, because we are running out of time. I am not too fussed about saying that, with respect, because I have already given way to him twice.
	This particular problem is partially correctible by accepting the Lords amendment, but the Bill is flawed on many fronts and needs a complete rethink. That is not providedlet me deal with the Home Secretary's point directlyby the Government amendment proposing an annual debate. Those of us who have taken part in such debates know that they offer an opportunity only for ratification, not a complete rethink. This Bill needs more than thatit needs a rewrite, not a rubber stamp. That is why the House of Lords voted 3:1 in favour of a sunset clause, with a record majority of 187 votes. That is why the previous Labour Lord Chancellor voted for it. That is why the previous Labour Cabinet Minister, Lord Barnett, voted for it. That is why Baroness Hayman, the Labour member of the Newton committee, voted for it. That is why a previous Home Secretary, Northern Ireland Secretary, Defence Secretary, and Attorney-General all voted for it. And that is why the sunset clause proposal had a majority of 45, without the Conservative votes, in the House of Lords. The proposal is important, not only because the Bill may prove counter-productive, but because there is a better alternative.
	Let me quote the noble Baroness Williams of Crosby, who is not someone I normally quote. She said:
	Finally, in this House, with the possible exception of the Government Front Bench, a clear consensus is already building up about what a new Bill ought to look like. It is not divided on party lines, nor on lines of the particular attitude one may have as regards one's previous interests or concerns. There is clearly a very wide support for a different kind of Bill.[Official Report, House of Lords, 8 March 2005; Vol. 670 c. 650.]
	I say to the Government that it is possible to get the matter right but they will not do that if they insist on trying to use this badly flawed Bill as some strange test of political machismo. Of course they should be tough on terrorism, but clumsy on terrorism is not tough on terrorism. Heavy handed on liberty is not tough on terrorism, and careless of justice is not tough on terrorism.
	The Bill is a bad measure, although it has been improved somewhat by the Lords. I recommend to hon. Members that we accept all the Lords amendments, let the Government use the improved Bill, but, most of all, allow Parliament to write a better one before the year is out.

John Denham: In view of the time, I shall be as brief as I can.
	Let me start with the sunset clause and the remarks of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis). He made several important points of principle about the hundreds of years of liberty that were being set aside and the tests that should apply in the judicial process. However, it is fair to remind him that, when, as a member of the previous Government, he voted every year to renew the Prevention of Terrorism Act, he supported a measure that prevented thousands of British citizens from living in England, Wales and Scotland, with no judicial process or legal standard of proof and none of the safeguards that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has suggested. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden cannot therefore credibly discover a set of principles and concerns about British liberties that he never applied when he was in government. Exclusion orders are similar to the non-derogated control orders.
	My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has proposed the same type of order with some protection. The question is whether we should apply a sunset clause or an annual vote to the measure. As I said on Third Reading, I believe that the Bill is only a stage in the move towards the sort of terrorism legislation that we need. Many proposals from the Newton report and other suggestions, such as acts preparatory, need to be considered carefully. I would like to revisit my right hon. Friend's decision to rule out intercept evidence, although I agree that it has marginal relevance to many of the cases that we are considering.
	I also believe that we should pursue the concept of the investigative magistrate, although, as a non-lawyer, I am prepared to admit that marrying a principle that has evolved in European continental law with the British system of common law may not be quite so easy. Such a process cannot be completed by November or even December this year. Indeed, if there is to be a general election, there are probably no more sitting days between now and then than there were between the Belmarsh judgment and now. Part of the problem about which people have complained is trying to pass legislation with a gun pointed to our heads because of the parliamentary timetable. It makes no sense to cock the gun now on the measure.
	I was surprised by some of the comments of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden. I believe that he meant that, in his view, there will not and should not be control orders and that is why he is happy to have a sunset clause, because it would provide that they would be with us briefly and disappear. Frankly, he would do better to be honest and vote against the Bill rather than hiding behind a sunset clause.
	Sadly, measures such as control orders are likely to be a feature of our counter-terrorism strategy for some considerable time. We need an approach that does not provide for having them for eight months and then getting rid of them but one whereby they will be part of the framework, which will be better in future. That is why annual renewal and a vote in the House is infinitely preferable to trying to include a sunset clause, which is a dishonest way in which to tackle the issue.

Robert Smith: Will the right hon. Gentleman explain how a provision for a renewal order would improve the Bill?

John Denham: A renewal order would not amend the Bill. That point has already been clearly made. I entirely trust my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, and, indeed, I would trust any of the Opposition parties, were they to win the general election. Everyone agrees that this is not the final word on anti-terrorism legislation. New legislation will be initiated by my party and would be initiated by other parties if there were a change of Government after the election. The issue is to get the rest of the anti-terrorism legislation right, not to introduce control orders for a period of six months, eight months or a year and then drop them. Frankly, if I thought that that was what we were going to do, I would vote against the Bill because that would be nonsense. There would be no protection against terrorism under such short-term measures. Sadly, we are building a framework of legislation that is likely to play an important part in our lives for 10 or 15 years or more. To set a timetable of only months before scrapping the legislation would be nonsense.

Patrick Cormack: The right hon. Gentleman is making a thoughtful speech. He said, however, that the proposal for a sunset clause was dishonest. Is he really accusing those who voted for it in the other place of being disingenuous or dishonest? He heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden that that measure would have been passed without a single Conservative vote. He knows that his own colleagues voted for it. Is he really saying that they are dishonest?

John Denham: I certainly believe that there were those who voted for the sunset clause in the other place because of their intense dislike of the whole principle of control orders and who wish to see them come to an end. I cannot, of course, speak for any of them, and my judgment can be on only some of them. Those who believe that we need control orders know that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is right to introduce his proposal for an annual vote in both Houses of Parliament, to provide a check on this legislation.

Dave Watts: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the difference between the Government, the Lords and the lawyers is that neither the Lords nor the lawyers would be held accountable for any terrorist attack?

John Denham: It is undoubtedly true that that responsibility lies with the Government, although, in fairness, that does not remove from any of us the obligation to scrutinise the legislation carefully.
	I am disappointed that the official Opposition have not managed to decide which side of the fence they are on in regard to control orders. I would have thought that, by now, we would have heard a more definitive response from them.

Alan Williams: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the annual opportunity to reject the renewal order is a very conclusive way of demanding a rethink?

John Denham: Indeed it is, particularly in the light of the high level of reporting, analysis and scrutiny that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has offered. It is not as though we would be going into that annual vote without a considerable amount of knowledge about how the legislation was operating in practice. Indeed, by the time we reach the second, if not the first, renewal, the use of the orders will no doubt have been tested in the High Court under the European convention on human rights, so there will have been independent scrutiny of the compliance of the legislation with the convention. I think that that is entirely adequate.

Donald Anderson: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, although the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) happily voted year after year for the prevention of terrorism Acts, a major change has taken place in the security context since then? At the time of the PTA, we did not have suicide bombers or bioterrorists, for example. The nature of the threat that our citizens face is now much greater.

John Denham: That is undeniably true. It is disappointing that those who regularly voted for the extension of the prevention of terrorism Acts with no qualms about issues of judicial process, of civil liberties or of hundreds of years of human rights have suddenly discovered those issues in such an implausible way during this process. However, that does not remove from us the need to get this legislation right.

William Cash: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

John Denham: No, I wish to make some progress, because many other Members wish to speak.
	In general, there has been a welcome of my right hon. Friend's moves to put the judiciary at the heart, and in every possible circumstance at the beginning, of the process. I will not dwell on that, but it is an important move, and it gave rise to most concern for many of us when we last discussed the issue.
	Let me touch briefly on the question of the balance of probability versus suspicion. First, this House should not lightly set aside the advice that we are told that the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister have received from the security services about the nature of the evidence available to them. Each of us must make this judgment individually. If they advise us that the lower threshold is necessary at least to have some level of control over people who might pose a threat to our wider society, lightly setting that aside is dangerous.
	Secondly, the process that my right hon. Friend has proposedthis point was confirmed in exchanges with himdoes not just verify whether it was right to have a control order but enables the judge to consider whether the particular measures in the control order are justified by the evidence put forward. Those of us who have watched the judiciary at work over the years, for example, in relation to antisocial behaviour orders, are familiar with the fact that the more draconian the order that one seeks, the more questioning and sceptical judges are likely to be about the quality of evidence that they receive. I am confident that if we stick with my right hon. Friend's proposals, judicial scrutiny will be adequate to ensure that there is sufficient evidence to justify the level of restriction proposed.

William Cash: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. In the preceding Committee stage, the Home Secretary, in answer to my question,
	Will he state unequivocally now that there will be no interference with the right of habeas corpus,
	said,
	I am advised that I can give the assurance that the hon. Gentleman is looking for: the proposals that I have established will not interfere with habeas corpus.[Official Report, 28 February 2005; Vol. 431, c. 692.]
	That is not the case, and the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) is disputing that.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. That is, strictly speaking, a matter of debate.

John Denham: I am confirmed in my judgment not to have allowed an intervention by the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash). I will complete my remarks.
	On the issue of the balance of proof, my view is that we should not lightly set aside the advice that we get from the Security Service, and I am confident that the process is sufficient to ensure that the level of restriction is justified by the level of evidence that is presented to the court. In those circumstances, we would do better to stay with what my right hon. Friend proposes. The level of scrutiny of this legislation, which has now been guaranteed, together with the fact that it will be annually reviewed, will give us the opportunity to revisit the matter in practice rather than having the somewhat theoretical debate that we are having this afternoon.

Tony McWalter: Can my right hon. Friend give me some guidance? Clearly, constraining people's liberty when there is only a 40 per cent. probability that they are in the category that should be constrained, as that is what reasonable suspicion can lead to, is an innovation. The Opposition spokesman said that such a person is hence probably not a terrorist. Clearly, it is still possible to justify detaining someone when there is only a 40 per cent. probability that they are a terrorist if the crimes that they might commit on release are so enormous as to compensate, as it were, for that lower level of probability. Is that what my right hon. Friend has in mind? If so, that gives us all pause for thought about the threshold and whether it is suitable.

John Denham: I recognise my hon. Friend's argument, but I shall pick him up on one important point: he talked about release. Orders under this level of suspicion do not lead to detention. It would be a matter of some concern if they were to do so. At the lower level of restriction on someone's absolute freedom, I believe that the sort of test that he has outlined is justified as a precautionary measure. The measure is not equivalent to a punishment, detention in someone's home or locking someone up in prison. It is a prudent measure taken on the basis of the information that is available to protect the public. On that basis, we should support my right hon. Friend's proposals.
	Because so many other Members wish to speak, I shall leave my remarks at that.

David Heath: It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham). I was struck by his comment, near the beginning of his speech, that he expected the Bill to be in force for 10, 15 or 20 years. I suggest that if that is indeed the case, it deserves rather more than three hours' debate.
	Despite my respect for individuals in another place, I take no pleasure in the fact that it is the unelected House that presented us with the Bill that we are considering today. This is effectively the third attempt at Second Reading, but it takes place in very restricted circumstances. The defeats incurred by the Government in the House of Lords were considerable. The Lords looked at the Bill and decided that it was beyond reasonable suspicion that it was a bad Bill, beyond the balance of probabilities that it was a bad Bill, indeed beyond reasonable doubt that it was a bad Bill, and that it was a Bill that they must amend.

Claire Ward: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

David Heath: I will, but I will not do so very often.

Claire Ward: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that his hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) was on national radio earlier today? He said:
	I personally believe and my party believes that it is worthwhile to have a marginal increase in the risk of terrorism.
	He went on to say:
	I don't think it is very likely that there will be huge amounts of people killed in terrorism.
	Will the hon. Gentleman take this opportunity to distance himself and his party from those outrageous remarksor does he really believe that the risk is worth accepting?

David Heath: My party has never suggested and would never suggest that there is not a real threat of terrorism, which we must address properly.

Claire Ward: Really?

David Heath: I am surprised that the hon. Lady has raised an issue that has already been raised by her right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. I do not think that it adds to the debate.

Claire Ward: Answer!

David Heath: The principles to which the Home Secretary adhered so firmly only a week ago appear to have shifted, especially in the context of judicial review. I listened to the Prime Minister at Question Time today, and I felt that he experienced some difficulty in distinguishing between principles and what was expedient. I found his explanation of why he rejected the sunset clauseto which I shall return shortlyincredible. He told us that it was impossible, because it was the clear advice of the police and the security services that we should not have such a clause. How absurd is that?
	This is a parliamentary matter. This is a question of how we determine the laws of this country. I do not believe it is a matter on which the police and the security services either have an opinion or would vouchsafe an opinion to the Prime Minister.

Douglas Hogg: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will remind the House that the outcome of the Hutton report made it wholly plain that the Prime Minister does not always give a full, clear or accurate account of the advice that he receives from the intelligence services.

David Heath: That view has certainly been expressed. I think that in general, whenever the Prime Minister makes assertions of that kind, he would be wise to publish the material on which he bases those assertions. Sometimes there seems to be a substantial difference between the one and the other.
	The Home Secretary is not an unintelligent man, and he has a proper regard for his duties. As has been pointed out, however, he has repeatedly suggested that he is making concessions. He is not making concessions; he is being defeated. He is being defeated by a House that does not agree with his proposalsnot by virtue of the votes of Opposition parties, but by virtue of the votes of members of his own party who have held senior office in that party, and members who have held judicial office and office in the senior ranks of the police service. So it would be wise if he were to take notice of what has been said.
	There are basic principles on which we must be clear when we look at this legislation. We have said all alongI repeat the point for the benefit of the hon. Member for Watford (Claire Ward)that we recognise that a threat exists, and we want to find the right mechanisms to address it. [Interruption.] That is the principal responsibility of any Governmentand, indeed, of any Parliamentand part of the response to it is ensuring that the measures that we put in place are commensurate with the risks involved[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Watford (Claire Ward) must not keep intervening from a sedentary position.

David Heath: I am most grateful, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It was a little distracting to have constant wittering in my ear.

Patrick Cormack: Does the hon. Gentleman think it pretty disgraceful that the Home Secretary, having given us only three hours in which to discuss this vast range of amendments, has now pushed off?

David Heath: I do find it odd, but not unusual given the record of this Government.
	What are the principles that we wish to see espoused in the Bill? First, there is the very important point that a judge, rather than an elected politician, should take decisions on restricting an individual's liberties. I acknowledge that we are making progress in that area, but the Home Secretary is still determined to persevere with what is a very odd positionat least until his next defeat at the other end of the Corridor. He wants to promote this entirely arbitrary distinction between a derogating and a non-derogating order.
	When we had this debate at the last time of asking in this place, it was quite clear that many Labour Members were entirely unpersuaded that there was a difference between derogating and non-derogating orders that required a different judicial process. Yet the Home Secretary is persisting in his view not only that such a distinction is necessary, but that the capacity in which a judge can act in the case of non-derogating orders is limited to judicial review, and that he cannot look at all the given circumstances. I simply do not accept that that is a reasonable distinction. We know that non-derogating orders can constitute a very substantial restriction on an individual's liberties, and we believe that a judge should take such decisions. They should of course be taken on the basis of evidence put forward by the Home Secretary, his having consulted the security services. The Home Secretary is indeed the starting point of this process, but it is the judge in court who should determine whether such restrictions should be made.
	The second principle is the primacy of prosecution. The Home Secretary has repeatedly asserted that it is right that prosecution be the preferred route in the case of any individual whom we believe to be guilty of, or preparing for, terrorism acts. We agree. In fact, that is precisely what the House of Lords said in their amendmentwhich the Home Secretary proposes to delete this evening. Deleting it cannot be right. I accept that an alternative wording is inserted at a laterand inappropriatepoint in the Bill, requiring the police to continue investigating such cases and to satisfy themselves before an order is made. But that gives the Bill a very strange architecture, and it does not reflect the Lords' clear and unambiguous assertion that the Director of Public Prosecutions must be consulted before an order is made. We believe that there should be no ambiguity concerning control orders. They should be for a fixed period, but of course renewable if that proves necessary. The Home Secretary seems to have accepted that point.
	An extraordinary argument has been advanced concerning the standard of proof. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) described the situation extremely well when he pointed out that these orders are to be placed on people who are probably not terrorists, by definition, according to the standard of proof that is to be applied.
	There are two reasons why I believe that it is not unreasonable to have the balance of probabilities as the test. First, the starting point should innately be the beyond reasonable proof criminal test and we are coming down from that, not up, on the say-so of the Home Secretary. Secondly, these hearings are to consider material that is not admissible in a court, so there is already a lowering of the standard of proof. I have no quarrel with that. There are circumstances in which that is right, but if we are proceed with it, it must surely be linked in with the balance of probabilities as the very lowest standard of proof that is appropriate.
	That is necessary if we are to ensure due process, which is a critical issue. I note the amendment tabled by the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) and commend it to the House. The issue was explored in the other place and we should continue to explore it. I do not accept that we can buy this pig-in-a-poke whereby there will be rules of court, but we are not allowed to know about them. At the moment, this House is apparently not allowed to share in the draft rules of court that are being prepared. In any case, we are told, this is a matter for the Lord Chancellor, not the Lord Chief Justice. I do not accept that: it should be a matter for the Lord Chief Justice and the rules of court should be clear about the admissibility of evidence derived from torture, for example. We wholly reject the idea that evidence derived from torture should play any part in any British judicial process. I simply do not understand why the Home Secretary is intent on removing the Bill's amended reference to compliance with human rights legislation.
	We believe that if the Government intend to introduce house arrest at any stage in future, it should clearly be a matter for this Houseindeed, for both Housesto determine and that that should be stated unambiguously. We believe that the Government should be actively exploring issues such as the use of intercept evidence in respect of new offences such as committing acts preparatory to terrorism. Sensible suggestions have been made and I believe that the Home Secretary will consider them, which is an essential part of the preparation for what I hope will be a better and more effective anti-terrorism Bill that will be laid before the next Parliament.
	That brings me to my final point, which is about the principle of the sunset clause. The reason for having such a clause is very clear. The legislation is imperfect and it is being rushed through Parliament, yet it needs the proper attention of both Houses of Parliament. It has been brought forward in haste, simply because nothing was done for three years to correct the deficiencies of previous legislation. We now face an unacceptable potential hiatus in our protections against terrorism. That is why we need emergency legislation to go through, but equally why such legislation should lapse. The sunset clause is therefore crucial.
	It is quite wrong to suggest that annual renewal can provide any substitute for ab initio consideration of the legislation. There is nothing to stop the House re-enacting a similar Bill if, in due course, it is decided that that is the right thing to do. The problem with renewal is that that is the only option that the House will have. One can imagine the circumstances in a week's time. The Home Secretary will say that we have no protection against terrorism and ask why Members are prepared to reject the only protection that we have against it. If we only have the option of renewal, that is what will be put before the House.

Diane Abbott: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that renewal is no substitute for a sunset clause? It is not a question of renewing this Bill, but of rewriting it. The run-up to a general election is the worst possible time to be drafting legislation such as this, and the very least that the House can do is vote in favour of the sunset clause.

David Heath: I am most grateful to the hon. Lady for her support. Her view is shared by the overwhelming majority in another place, which would have accepted the proposal without a single Conservative peer going through the Aye Lobby. I would love to believe that every hon. Member would recognise the importance of revisiting this matter after the general election, but I have no great expectation of that.

Peter Bradley: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is never a good time for considering or passing legislation such as this? It is not a question of whether it is desirable, but of whether it is necessary.

David Heath: There is never a good time to consider a legislation such as this, but there is sometimes ample time. We could have discussed this Bill three years ago, or a year ago. We could have discussed the recommendations from the Newton committee, or those made by my noble friend Lord Carlile, but we have not done so. The Government left this Bill to the last possible moment and then said, We have an emergency. That is an unacceptable way to bring forward a Bill such as this.
	Many other hon. Members wish to speak, so I shall end by saying that this House's prime concern is the protection of the people of this country. It is entirely inappropriate for any hon. Member to suggest otherwise. As the Home Secretary says, we must balance that concern with protection of the liberties that we have always enjoyed.
	I believe that a consensus can be reached. Throughout our discussions, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) has started from the point that our party believes that a consensus is possible. The Lords amendments take us very close to that consensus. To reject that through political machismo or obstinacy, or for any other reason, would be absurd and dangerous. It would threaten the physical safety of the people of this country, and the safety of the institutions that we hold dear.
	I find it difficult to understand why Ministers might risk losing a Bill as important as this just because they refuse to listen to those who perhaps know a little more than they do about this subject, and who have made very sensible suggestions for making this an effective piece of legislation.

Win Griffiths: I moved an amendment, when the Committee of the whole House examined this Bill, that would have provided that a court would decide on an application for an order from the Home Secretary. In that debate, my right hon. Friend said that he believed that that should be an Executive decision, and he made that clear again at the start of his contribution this afternoon. I hold an equally strong but opposite view. Like my right hon. Friend, I am not a lawyer, but my feeling is that the decision cannot be left entirely to the Executive.
	The Bill has returned from the other place with myriad amendments. Some of them appear complex to people who are not lawyers. The Government have replied with their own set of amendments and they, too, are quite complex. In my contribution this afternoon, I want to set out what I believe the Home Secretary is trying to achieve. I also want to explore what might happen in the future, and I hope that some of my fears about this legislation will be calmed.
	Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety, who is on the Front Bench, will correct me if I go wrong, but this is what I believe will happen. The Home Secretary will apply to a High Court judge for a non-derogating control order in the same way that he will apply for a derogating control order. An order will not take effect unless it is confirmed by the judge, who will consider the evidence and decide whether the Home Secretary has a prima facie case for making an order, whether non-derogating or derogating. That is true despite the controversy that has emerged in this debate about how judicial review might work in respect of non-derogating orders.
	The lawyers seem to have a difference of opinion, but I am reassured by my right hon. Friend's statement that the judge will be able to consider the evidence when making a decision. When the judge considers the evidence for an order from the Home Secretary, and if he agrees and the order takes effect, he will immediately and automatically transfer that order to the court for a full hearing. That will take place as soon as possible and the defence will be consulted about the amount of time it needs before proceeding to the High Court hearing. In addition, there will be an emergency procedure. The Home Secretary will be able to make an emergency order to take effect immediately, but at the same time he will refer the emergency order

Richard Shepherd: I do not mean to be short with the hon. Gentleman, but is he attacking his own Home Secretary? Does he think that the Home Secretary so inadequately explained his case for more than an hour that it is necessary to repeat the process?

Win Griffiths: I believe that it is. There was a considerable amount of discussion about whether the Home Secretary was right or wrong, and I am saying what I believe he is trying to do.

Anne Campbell: I am finding my hon. Friend's explanation clear and helpful.

Win Griffiths: The Home Secretary will be able to make an order to take effect immediately, but at the same time he will refer it to the court for confirmation within seven days. If the court confirms the order, it will go to the High Court for a full hearing. If it is not confirmed, it will cease to have effect.
	The Home Secretary saidlet me be plain about this because there seems to be considerable disquiet that it will not happenthat he will report to Parliament on the application of all orders every three months, and he will explain, if he has used the emergency procedure, exactly why he did so. There will be accountability. In making all the orders, the Home Secretary will be required to consult the police and the prosecuting authorities before making them and the police, and the prosecuting authorities will have the opportunity to tell the Home Secretary whether a case can be taken to court as normal. That will be in addition to the fact that in the Bill that went to the other place, the Secretary of State was already making provision for the police and prosecuting authorities to keep under review any person subject to a control order and to continue the process of gathering evidence.

Kevin McNamara: I have been following with interest what my hon. Friend is saying. Can he tell us where in the procedures a person subject to detention will be told the evidence on which he is being detained?

Win Griffiths: I was coming to that. The Secretary of State was at pains to point out that some of the evidence could be heard in open court and some would be heard in closed session. An undertaken has been given that the special advocates will be brought together to try to develop a system whereby defendants will be able to know if not everything, enough of the case against them to enable them to mount a defence. That is very important, and the quarterly reports to Parliament will provide an opportunity to test the extent to which that is happening. At the end of the year, Parliament will have an opportunity to decide whether the system is working and it will be able to vote down the legislation if it wants to do so.

Kevin McNamara: Is my hon. Friend saying that a detainee will not always know the evidence on which he is being detained?

Win Griffiths: Yes, it is possible that certain intelligence evidence will not be made known to the defendant. These are difficult circumstances and the system is not perfect. We do not live in an ideal world, but hon. Members are welcome to tell me how they think the procedures could be better.

Gordon Prentice: Given that so much will ride on information from the intelligence services, is there not a mechanism we could use to test independently the veracity and reliability of information from the security services? We all remember that Colin Powell, then US Secretary of State, relied on information from the British security services in respect of the second dodgy dossier, which was written by a PhD student and was completely fictitious.

Win Griffiths: I would hope that in similar circumstances the judge would be able to make some assessment of the evidence. Given that much of the evidence is seen by the Intelligence and Security Committee, I had hoped that an amendment could be tabled to involve it in the process. I hope that that Committee could still become involved.

Alan Beith: I should point out that the ISC does not look at the individual evidence relating to individual cases. I do not speak on behalf of the Committee on this point, but it would be a major departure for it to become involved in adjudicating on how sound the evidence was in individual cases. One should perhaps therefore look elsewhere for a procedure to meet that requirement.

Win Griffiths: The right hon. Gentleman can perhaps correct me on this point, but I wonder whether the Committee would be able to consider the issues in specific cases to assess the value of the evidence against the information it received in the normal run of its examination of intelligence and security matters. I would have thought that the Committee's members would be an eminently suitable group of people to assess whether the evidence was of sufficient quality to enable a judge to make a decision.
	My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary made it clear this afternoon that he accepted that the measures were temporaryalthough we do not know whether they will last one year, 10 years or 20 yearsand that he would seek to develop a consensus about new legislation to deal with terrorism that would mean that this legislation would not have to be used. Although my right hon. Friend is not willing to accept amendment No 31, he made it clear that he would consider some of the wider points about trying to achieve a consensus through some sort of Privy Council committee, if not a Newton-style committee. I accept that the legislation is not perfect, but my right hon. Friend has moved

David Taylor: My hon. Friend tabled an amendment that was defeated by only 14 votes last weekand many hon. Members will hang on his answer to the following question. Despite the Bill's residual flaws, is he content that it should reach the statute book in its present form, with the standard of proof for non-derogating orders remaining suspicion only and charges not necessarily being communicated to the defendant? Could not it still have come straight from The Trial by Franz Kafka?

Win Griffiths: We can always compare issues in a drama on a stage with what happens in real life, but I believe that the Secretary of State has accepted the fundamental point that he will not make the decision himself, but put the matter to a judge, after which the case will go to a High Court hearing. There will be an opportunity for the evidence to be examined at that hearing, so we have made significant progress.

Dominic Grieve: As I read amendment (a) to Lords amendment No. 1, the Secretary of State is taking back the power to make the orders. I have listened to the hon. Gentleman carefully, but I am worried that he might have been misled by what the Government have told him.

Win Griffiths: The hon. Gentleman might be saying that the Government Front Bench is misleading me, but my view, after reading the amendments, is that the Secretary of State will make an application to a judge for a non-derogating order[Hon. Members: No.] Well, the Secretary of State will make an order that will be put to a judge so that the judge can decide whether it is right before it is implemented. The judge will be able to reject the order, which would mean that it would not be implemented, or to amend it if he thinks that the Secretary of State's proposal is disproportionate.

David Lammy: indicated assent.

Dominic Grieve: rose

Win Griffiths: My hon. Friend on the Front Bench is telling me that that is the case, but I shall give way to the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) again.

Dominic Grieve: I must say to the hon. Gentleman that there is a clear difference between an order that is made by a judge and an order that is made by the Secretary of State and presented to a judge for ratification. We have been trying to debate that matter this afternoon. If it has been suggested to him that those orders would be one and the same, he is being misled.

Win Griffiths: I am not saying that the orders would be one and the same; I am saying that a non-derogating order made by the Secretary of State could not be implemented unless a judge approved it. If a judge approved it, the case would go to the High Court for further consideration so that the person subject to the order could build up a defence of his position. The Government are examining ways of improving the operation of the special advocate procedure so that such defences can be more effective.
	Given the situation in which we find ourselves, rather than having no protection at all we should accept the provisions and the Secretary of State's offer to examine the broader situation over a slightly longer time scale. The Bill gives both Houses the opportunity to vote annually on whether to renew it, so an annual sunset clause is built into it. That is why, even though the Bill is not perfect, I am prepared to support the Government tonight.

Douglas Hogg: I am grateful to Mr. Speaker for selecting amendment (a) to Lords amendment No. 8, which stands in my name and is designed to ensure that there is due process. Before I speak to the amendment, however, I want to say something about the Prime Minister. He, along with the Home Secretary, has told the House several times that he is acting on the advice of the intelligence and security services. However, he also told us that when he said that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Let us remember a clear finding of the Butler report: the Government did not fully or accurately represent to the House the contents of the intelligence reports that they were receiving. That being so, I say to the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary that if they wish to rely on such advice, they would do well to place it in its written form in the Library of the House of Commons, because otherwise I question it.
	I am conscious that we have only a short time for the debate and that many other right hon. and hon. Members wish to speak, so I shall be brief. I shall not go on at any length about the deplorable nature of our proceedings or, indeed, the Bill. I shall focus on justice, because the one thing that we should be asking ourselves is whether what we are doing is just in the broadest possible sense. Let us remind ourselves that these control orders, whether they be derogating or non-derogating, restrict the liberty of the citizen to an extraordinary extent. The derogating orders will keep people in custody; the non-derogating orders can destroy their livelihood and their social existence.

Chris Bryant: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Douglas Hogg: No, I shall not give way at this juncture.
	The orders are of profound consequence, and that is no doubt why the American constitutionthe fifth amendmentwould prevent the American Government from doing just what we are doing. The only place they can do it is in Guantanamo bay because the American constitution does not protect people in Guantanamo bay. What we are doing today is what the Americans are doing in Guantanamo bay, but cannot do on the mainland of the United States. I find that a deplorable and shameful thing.

Chris Bryant: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Douglas Hogg: No, I am going to proceed. I shall be brief because other Members want to speak.
	The point I am making to the House is not so much about the identity of the person making the order, although it is better by far that the judge should play a prominent partwhat really matters is the process. What material will be placed before the person making the order, on the basis of which somebody can have his liberty and livelihood destroyed? It is at that point that I come to my amendment, which is a modest one. I ask the House to consider it.
	First, the detained person should have reasonable notice of the proceedings. Who could quarrel with that? Next, the detained person should have a summary of the allegations. Who could quarrel with that? Next, unless the judge orders otherwise, and that is a protection to the Crown, the detained person should know the nature of the evidence against him or her. Otherwise, how can he instruct the special advocate? Next, he should be present throughout the proceedings. Next, he should be able to give evidence and call witnesses. Next, he should be able to submit relevant documents. Next, he should be able to ask questions of those who are accusing him. Those are the basic rights that we demand of any court in any civilised country.
	If we deny people those rights, we deny them justice. I have practised in the courts for 40 years or morein the same type of courts as the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews). We know that grave injustices occur even within the judicial system as it exists in the criminal courts. It is certainabsolutely certainthat grave injustices will flow from that which we are doing today.
	I say to the House and to Members in the other place that we should not be party to such a disgraceful interference with political and legal rights. We are betraying our country. We are betraying our constituents. We should uphold the House of Lords in all its amendments.

Frank Dobson: I am trying to recognise the dilemma in which the Government find themselves, as they try to find a way between the requirements of security and our traditions of the rule of law and natural justice.
	I do not support the sunset clause. Like probably everyone in the House today, I accept that it is unlikely that we shall get this legislation right. It will need sorting out. After the general election, the Government propose to introduce new legislation on terrorism, which will probably command broad support. We shall have to look at that and other terrorism legislation in the statute book and try to come up with something better, but the idea that it can be done by November is preposterous.
	No work will be done on those measures between now and the general election. There will be turmoil for a few weeks after the general election. There will then be a few weeks of Parliament going about its normal business. Then there will be a recess followed by the party conferences and we shall actually get down to this business, which should be at the heart of what the House is doing, only in Octoberfive or six weeks before the due date of the sunset clause. The idea that the sunset clause would enable us to look rationally, deeply and carefully at the legislation is preposterous and anyone who thinks about it would have to recognise that.

Alan Beith: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Frank Dobson: No, I really must get on.
	I do not understand why my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is not prepared to accept the position of the House of Lords on the lesser orders. As I said during the previous debate on the Bill, we can assume that the people who will be subject to house arrest are the most dangerous ones. He has conceded that the judge will take the decision in those cases and I cannot really understand why he will not concede that the judge should take the decision in the lesser cases. That seems to amount, roughly speaking, to administrative convenience, and we should not support that. It is still not clear to menon-lawyer that I amwhether the judge will be able to look at the facts in all cases, or whether the suspect will know enough about the charges to be able to challenge them, and we need to look very carefully at that.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Frank Dobson: No, I would rather not.
	On the burden of proof, I have not followed the logic of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretaryhe is a good friend of minein that he says that we do not need a high burden of proof because this is not punishment. He is quite right: the burden of proof that we need for punishment is that of being guilty beyond reasonable doubt. Nevertheless, people's liberty will be interfered with, and I must admit that I find myself somewhere between balance of probability and reasonable suspicion. We are in that territory. If we had had enough time to think about that, we might have even come up with a novel definition somewhere between those of balance of probability and reasonable suspicion.

Chris Bryant: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Frank Dobson: No, I really must get on.
	The other point that I would make is that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary cited certain cases where judgesof course, they are not always right, nor is the Appellate Committee of the House of Lordsand said that reasonable suspicion was all right, but those cases applied to people who were not British citizens. We are talking about an extension of that approach to British citizens for the first time in our history, and I personally cannot, and will not, do that.
	I would welcome an opportunity to look at the legislation in perhaps a year's time, when we have all had the opportunity to do so very carefully. The House, which is elected to protect not only the security of the country, but rights to natural justice and the rule of law, could look at it very carefully and we would have done our job properly, which no one can possibly even assert that we have been able to do in the preposterously short time that has been available to either us or the House of Lords.
	I once checked on the passage of the Bill of Rights in 1688. It went to and fro, from the Lords to the Commons and back again, and the Commons eventually gave way because the king prorogued the Parliament and they beat him to it, but I have to say that the House of Commons was then in favour of protecting the rights of the individual and the Lords were against doing sosadly, it seems to be the other way round today.

Kenneth Clarke: I have the great pleasure of having five minutesI hope to limit myself to thatof the 20 left to the House to discuss this entire measure, and it is a privilege to have any portion of the three hours that we have been allotted. I might be able to beat five minutes because it seems to me that a very large number of those hon. Members who have taken part in the proceedings have got as near to a consensus as we did a little over a week ago, when we supported the amendment moved by the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths) and got very near to defeating the Government. There is an enormous degree of consensus, with various Members expressing discontent on both sides of the House. Most of us accept that something like control orders need to be introduced, most of us accept that some special procedures need to be introduced and most of us fully acknowledge our duty to look after the security of this country.
	The hon. Member for Bridgend, who courageously pressed his amendment last week, has been persuaded that somehow all has now been satisfied. I accept that the Home Secretary has tried to make concessions. I suspect that he has had difficulties with some of his colleagues in making them. He has tried to meet us but he has not in any way resolved the difficulties surrounding the Bill, in my opinion.
	All that I can do is express my frustrations with the enormous issues that are not resolved, which cannot be resolved in the next hour or two, and which cannot be resolved by both Houses in the time remaining before a general election. There is the question, which the hon. Member for Bridgend pressed, about who makes the decision on a control order for the lesser degree of control orders. The Secretary of State is going back to giving himself the power to make the order and subjecting himself to judicial review. I have not practised law for a quarter of a century, so I shall leave others to argue what the up-to-date position is, but I am sure that judicial review does not mean that the judge starts all over again and decides what makes the original decision, on what he regards as the merits. It is a lesser procedure of challenge. It is certainly less than the concession that has been made on the more important control orders. Otherwise, why have the Government gone back to bring in judicial review and not allow the lower orders to be subject to the same process?
	There is the question of who determines whether prosecution would have been the proper procedure. I am not content with consulting the police and prosecution authorities before the Home Secretary decides whether or not he would rather go down the route of a control order with the powers that we are discussing.
	The burden of proof seems to dissatisfy almost everyone who has spoken this evening. It is astonishing that we are being asked to agree that someone who is probably not guilty of the allegations should be made subject to such severe restrictions on his liberty and livelihood. We would not accept that for a parking ticket, but we are being asked to accept it for a control order. There is an area yet to be developed about how far the accused person should know the nature of the charges against him. His advocate will not be allowed to go back to him once he discovers the true nature of the charges against such a person. That person will not be given even a general description of what actually will lead to him losing his liberty.
	I disagree with only one point made by the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson). I urge the House and the other place to stick to the idea of a sunset clause. We all know that we have to have legislation in place by this weekend. We know also that the legislation that we have is not what the Home Secretary would have wished. We have had no chance to change it but the other place has had three days and it has knocked it about considerably. I suggest that the Government should take the powers that they will have and then we should all agree that, after the election, a fresh piece of legislation should be introduced. We should have a Second Reading, an organised Committee, consideration on Report and a Third Reading before the measure goes to another place.
	No amendments were tabled and considered, except those presented by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg), along with a crowd of amendments covering the entire Bill. It is a bizarre means of proceeding. The House spent more than 700 hours considering fox hunting, yet it is debating the substance of this Bill in three hours in bizarre procedural terms. It is clear that we should return to the matter and have proper legislation.
	Whichever party wins the next election, there will be no difficulty in getting a majority of the House to agree that pretty severe measures, with some unfortunate derogations from our individual liberties, are required to tackle the serious problem of terrorism. We are told no. Some Labour Members say that a concession would be an annual review. I am not going to return to sterile arguments about why some Members were voting on the opposite side when we had annual reviews on the control of terrorism legislation. The right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) used to vote against them and I used to argue in favour of them. We all agreed, however, on the rest of the measure. We were arguing only about exclusion orders. They stopped somebody who had been living in Ireland for some time getting off a ferry when it reached Liverpool. That person would be sent back, and Labour Members objected to that. We should bear in mind how far we have slipped from then. Look at what we are talking about now. Look at what the right hon. Gentleman is advocating now. He thought that there was a matter of principle.

John Denham: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Kenneth Clarke: I cannot give way to the right hon. Gentleman. I will just complete my five minutes before I resume my place. I realise that he is on the side of the angels, but his particular angel is being too naive if he thinks that we are half way near to getting the sort of terrorism legislation that the House should approve, in any circumstances, once it is given the proper time to debate it.

Vera Baird: I am not going to pretend that the Bill is perfect, but now the situation is plain: control orders will not be made by the Secretary of State and they will all have to be made by application to the court and a judge, save for urgent non-derogated orders. I accept that such orders will be rare, as my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said, but these are extremely important matters. Government Members who have held out for the applications to be made to the judge first would not like the court to be sidestepped if every application were claimed to be urgent because it dealt with terrorism. I therefore rely heavily on my right hon. Friend's assurances that it will be only in rare cases that the court is sidestepped.
	Decisions will be made by judges, not the Home Secretary, who has Executive responsibility for national security and who will carry the can if he has too light a touch with suspected terrorists and an incident occurs. That responsibility is a strong wind blowing in one direction and the most civil libertarian Home Secretary would find it difficult to balance it against the civil liberties of the person from whom they are told the danger is coming. A judge does not have that Executive responsibility. His professional role is to be completely separate from the Government and objectively and with reasoning to make a judgment between the Government concerned and the ordinary liberties that hon. Members, I and the defendant all share. From that point of view, the judge's decision is fairer and better and there is a better calibre of scrutiny all round. Detention is not Executive detention if it is imposed by a judge who is satisfied that the Home Secretary's application passes the test in the statute.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: rose

Vera Baird: I regret that I cannot give way, because I have to hurry.
	I shall return to the test in the statute in a minute. However, I wish that we had never even started to talk about Executive detention. We have now moved away from that completely. Talk of Magna Carta has clogged the airwaves for several weeks, but it was simply not necessary. It is a far from perfectly analogy, but the orders are recognisably similar to antisocial behaviour orders. Someone applies for an antisocial behaviour order, often on hearsay, and information is collated by a local authority noise inspector or by a police officer who was not present when the incidents occurred. Following a complaint that someone has behaved in an antisocial waythey have not committed a crime, but they offer a riskrules are imposed and the recipient of the order cannot go into a particular area, must wear a tag and must be in their home after 10 pm. It is not the same as a control order, but it is in the same ball park. Anticipating that someone is engaged in terrorism, we will require him to follow orders imposed by a court to protect the public from risk.
	Turning briefly to the test, there is a major question to be askedis the standard of proof good enough? We are arguing about two different requirements. Are there reasonable grounds to suspect that someone is a terrorist, or is it more probable than not that he is a terrorist? That it is not half as important as the question of whether he can answer the charges against him. In most instances in which there are reasonable grounds to suspect that the guy is a terrorist, that is unlikely not to be the case. If there are reasonable grounds to suspect that he is a terrorist, he probably is one. In my own view, I must tell the House plainly that, where there is evidence providing reasonable grounds to suspect that he is a terrorist, a judge should impose restraints on him to stop him carrying on in that way.
	Far more important than that almost but not quite arcane point about the standard of proof is the condition that the suspect must have the best opportunity to answer the case against him. I have been greatly cheered by the attitude of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to reviewing the system of special advocates.
	It is clear that, at present, defendants in this position will not talk to their special advocates because they regard them as appointed by the Attorney-General, who is often their opponent in these very cases. It is imperative that these people should have faith in their advocates and be allowed to pick from a security cleared list of barristers, so that they have their own choice of person. Then the advocate can see the defendant, take a long and detailed history over the relevant period, then see the secret intelligence and hope that he has the instructions to answer the allegations. If he has not, my right hon. Friend has also indicated that he would be willing to discuss a system where, in that situation, a special advocate lists the questions that he wants to ask and approaches the judge as to whether he may be able to ask them without endangering intelligence. This is as good as it is ever going to get.
	That is extremely reassuring. We all wish people who are suspected of terrorism could be brought to the criminal courts and tried. Now, one cannot do anything else to these people until one has ascertained that they cannot be tried. That, too, is hugely reassuring. I do not see that a sunset clause in November would help anyone at all. There is supposed to be a general election in May. It will take us until June to be sworn in again. By July, we will be in recess until October. A long time for reflection is needed to improve upon the Bill, and November has nothing to do with it. It will be reviewed in a year.

Tony McWalter: Will my hon. and learned Friend give way?

Vera Baird: No, I do not have time and others want to get in. I am about to conclude.
	Let me make a short list. One has to exhaust the possibilities of prosecuting before one can make an order. One can get an order only if one goes to a judge and the Home Secretary has a positive attitude to ensuring that the defendants get a better deal out of their special advocates than they get now. That is good progress towards an acceptable Bill. The people who are in Belmarsh will be coming out on Friday. We can, in my view, with greater contentment than I thought possible last week, vote now for the Bill.

Patrick Cormack: The hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird), for whom I have considerable respect, is rather too easily persuaded. There is a great degree of consensus in the Chamber tonight, and between the Chamber and the other place, first, that some legislation is necessarywe accept that, albeit reluctantly; secondly, that the Bill is wholly unsatisfactory; and thirdly, that the way in which the House of Commons has been treated by the Government in general and the Home Secretary in particular is nothing short of disgraceful.
	We have had three hours today, ending at 7.5 pm, to consider a raft of amendments passed by the House of Lords, which had a couple of days in Committee to crawl over the Bill and to improve it. We will have had three hours, of which the Home Secretary took an hour and 10 minutes or more. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) made an admirable speech from the Front Bench, and spoke for about half an hour. The rest of the House of Commons, including the Liberal Democrat Front-Bench spokesman, has had less than an hour and a half. That is a disgrace.
	I hope the Home Secretary will recognise that such treatment of Parliament and of the elected Chamber, which is supposed to have primacy, is something of which he ought to be deeply ashamed. He should be all the more ashamed when we are dealing with such a far-reaching subject that touches upon the liberty of the individual. I am one of those who have some sympathy with what the Government seek to do, but I feel nothing but disgust for the manner in which they have done it.
	I urge the Home Secretary to think again about the sunset clause. Reviewing the Act every year is no answer because, as others have pointed out, when the Act comes up, it has to be accepted or rejected. Whoever is the Home Secretary, we are under pressure to do that. The Home Secretary has only one point of substance in his opposition to the sunset clause, and that is the timing of the sunset. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden made it plain that the sunset need not necessarily be in November. Let it be at the end of the year, at the end of January or even a year from today, but there should be a sunset clause so that this wholly unsatisfactory, imperfect, intrusive, draconian legislation can be properly examined, so that there can be pre-legislative scrutiny of whatever is put before both Houses, so that there can be full consideration in both Houses, and so that Members in all parts of the House can contribute to the debate in a way in which we have not been able to do hitherto.
	I make this plea to the Home Secretary: let the sunset be later than November, but there must be a sunset. He proposes to foist upon the country an imperfect, appallingly drafted Bill. The other place has tried to improve the Bill, and it has improved it in some measure, but he does not want its improvements. He wants the Bill on the statute book, and he wants it to be reviewed annually, but it should not be.
	The Bill is far too appalling for any Government to take any pride in it, and the Home Secretary should at least rescue some of his reputation, if he has any left.

Clive Soley: This will probably be the last time that I discuss this issue, with which I have been involved since the 1970s in this House. I address my remarks to a number of Conservative Members who have spoken, including the former Home Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), and the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg).
	When the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham was a Home Office Minister, he used to lecture me on why I should not try to criticise the prevention of terrorism Act. At that time, we were excluding people within the UK and picking up several thousand people a year, of whom we charged less than 1 per cent. with terrorist offences. Before that, the right hon. and learned Members for Rushcliffe and for Sleaford and North Hykeham supported Northern Ireland internment orders, which resulted in several thousand people being interned on the Secretary of State's say so with no judicial involvement whatever, which was a total breach of habeas corpus.
	Conservative Members' indignation is not right. I do not say that just to score a political pointit could be argued that I do so in view of the historybut to make the point that we must not continue to legislate on terrorism in this way. For some 30 years, we have legislated on terrorism, which is a central problem for the British judicial systemthis point applies to other systems, too, although perhaps it applies to ours in particularbecause in dealing with terrorism, we are trying to stop something happening.
	British law is good at dealing with situations in which an offence has been committed. If the Liberal spokesman, the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), re-reads his speech, he will see that his party's position is muddled. He wants to introduce a legal process to deal with someone who has committed a crime, whereas the Billthis is why the Conservatives and Liberals supported the old prevention of terrorism Actis designed to stop something happening.
	If anybody has any doubt about the seriousness of the situation, they should examine the UN report on terrorism, Threats, Challenges and Change. A couple of weeks ago, Kofi Annan discussed the profound and serious threat to London of a terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction, which we must take seriously. I fully understand the Home Secretary's position when he argued that the legislation should be executive, because we are trying to prevent something from happening and are not dealing with an offence that has been committed. The Bill is a way of trying to assess intelligence in order to prevent such action. However, because of the feeling in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary was absolutely right to make these changes, and I particularly welcome the annual renewal of the legislation.
	We must take our time to get the legislation right. After the election, the three main partiesI hope that the minor parties will participate, toomust find a structure in which we can come up with a system to deal with an ongoing terrorist threat, which Kofi Annan and the UN report say will continue for some decades yet, which will be international and suicidal and which will aim to kill masses of civilians.
	That is what we have to deal with, and it would be a good idea for the parties to agree a broad structure. We should consider a new Act that deals with acts preparatory to an act of terrorism. We should consider the possibility of importing, difficult as it will be, the narrow area of European law whereby the inquisitorial system is used for terrorism, or the Irish system of special courts. Those are all options that we are not currently considering. I certainly do not want to go back to what the Tories did when they rammed legislation through, often late at night when nobody was around. They complain about three hours of debate today, but they did it at 1 o'clock in the morning. That was an appalling way in which to legislate on terrorism.
	I make my final plea to the Tories and the Liberals, who have a duty not only to support the Bill today but to come back after the election and join in all-party talks to set up the appropriate Committee structure in this House to examine the procedure and then come up with legislation that we can all live with over the coming years.

Richard Shepherd: I support the Lords in all their contentions in respect of the Bill. This comes down to a question of trust. I listened to the Prime Minister today when he asserted, as he often does, that only he and his Home Secretary can judge the security of the citizen, the security of this nation and the balance between the two. I do not accept that proposition. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) pointed out, he took us to war on a supposition[Hon. Members: Oh!] Hon. Members may say, Oh!, but that fundamentally undermines our confidence in a Government whose assertions put at risk our liberty, freedom, custom and history.
	I stand by those things that have seen us through the most desperate hours in the life of this nation. The security of this nation is secure in our hands if we have access to due process. This Government have sought to strike away the most fundamental liberties that we need to secure our own freedom[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell) may shout at me, but the truth is that this is what this House stands for. We are meant to be able to hold up these standards, and they should not depend on the House of Lords reminding us where we come from and what this is all about. I urge this House to continue to support the House of Lords and to give us the opportunity to consider this legislation again in a sensible, measured and proper way, because the way in which it has been debated is a denial of due process, which is what the whole argument is about.

Hazel Blears: The legislation that is before us this evening is some of the most serious and important that we will ever be called upon to consider. I think that there is now a recognition right across the House that there is a real and serious

Dominic Grieve: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I understood that there were to be no winding-up speechesotherwise, I would have sought to catch your eyeso on what basis are we having this one?

Mr. Speaker: This is not about winding-up speeches. The hon. Lady tried to catch my eye, and I have agreed to let her speak. Sometimes the hon. Gentleman tries to catch my eye, and I let him speak.

Hazel Blears: This is serious and complex legislation. I think that there is now widespread recognition of a real and serious terrorist threat of a different nature from that which we faced in the past. The amendments put forward today represent significant progress. I am grateful to all my hon. Friends for the constructive way in which they have engaged and the suggestions that they have made. We now have significant judicial involvement in all the orders that we seek. We have consultation with the police on whether prosecution is possible, because that is always our preferred route. We have examined the standard of proof and my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush (Mr. Soley) made it clear that we are considering preventive orders, which seek to anticipate what might happen, and assessments of intelligence and risk. I therefore believe that our standard of proof for reasonable suspicion for the non-derogating orders is correct.
	The Bill includes a series of checks and balances. We have proposed annual renewal and three-monthly reports to Parliament on the way in which the measure works. We will have an independent review of how the Bill works in practice. The sunset clause that Conservative Members propose is unrealistic for the practical reasons that my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) set out.
	A sunset clause is inappropriate for another reason: it could send the message to terrorists, who will be watching our debate closely, that we are uncertain about what we want to do to ensure that we have a proper legal framework to tackle terrorism in our country. We have tried to establish a legal framework that balances national security with individual liberty, but it is vital that we convey the message that we want to make this country the most hostile environment in which terrorists could consider operating. That is why we need a series of control orders that are proportionate to the threat that we face and non-discriminatory, in compliance with the European convention. Our amendments will achieve that.
	I ask the House to support our amendments and reject the Lords amendments
	It being three hours after the commencement of proceedings, Mr. Speaker put the Question necessary for the disposal of business to be concluded at that hour, pursuant to Order [this day].

Question put, That amendment (a) to Lords amendment No. 1 be made:
	The House divided: Ayes 348, Noes 240.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Lords amendment, as amended, agreed to.
	Amendments made: (b) and (c).
	Lords amendment, as amended, agreed to.
	Lords amendment: No. 16
	Amendments made: (a) to (g).
	Lords amendment, as amended, agreed to.
	Lords amendment: No. 23
	Amendment made: (a).
	Lords amendment, as amended, agreed to.
	Lords amendment No. 6 disagreed to.
	Lords amendment: No. 8.
	Motion made, and Question put, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.[Mr. Heppell.]
	The House divided: Ayes 340, Noes 251.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Lords amendment: No. 9
	Motion made, and Question put, That the House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.[Mr. Heppell.]
	The House divided: Ayes 343, Noes 244.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Lords amendment disagreed to.
	Lords amendments Nos. 12, 13, 15 and 17 disagreed to.
	Government amendments (a) to (f) to the words so restored to the Bill, agreed to.
	Lords amendment Nos. 22, 27  and 28 disagreed to.
	Lords amendment: No. 31.
	Motion made, and Question put, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.[Mr. Heppell.]
	The House divided: Ayes 341, Noes 238.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Lords amendment disagreed to.
	Lords amendment No. 32 disagreed to.
	Lords amendment: No. 33.
	Motion made, and Question put, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.[Mr. Heppell.]
	The House divided: Ayes 340, Noes 240.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Lords amendment disagreed to.
	Amendments made: (a) to (c) in lieu.
	Lords amendment No. 37 disagreed to.
	Amendments made: (a) to (o) in lieu of Lords amendments Nos. 8, 9, 12, 13, 15, 17, 22, 28 and 37.
	Lords amendment: No. 38
	Motion made, and Question put, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.Mr. Heppell.]
	The House divided: Ayes 326, Noes 231.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Lords amendment disagreed to.
	Lords amendment No. 39 disagreed to.
	Lords amendment: No. 40.
	Motion made, and Question put, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.[Mr. Heppell.]
	The House divided: Ayes 317, Noes 233.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Lords amendment disagreed to.
	Lords amendment No. 42 disagreed to.
	Amendments made: (a) to (c) in lieu of Lords amendments Nos. 38 to 40 and 42.
	Remaining Lords amendments agreed to.
	Committee appointed to draw up Reasons to be assigned to the Lords for disagreeing to their amendments Nos. 6, 27, 31 and 32: Ms Hazel Blears, Mr. Dominic Grieve, Mr. David Heath, Mr. John Heppell and Kali Mountford; Ms Hazel Blears to be the Chairman of the Committee; Three to be the quorum of the Committee.[Mr. Heppell.]
	To withdraw immediately.
	  Reasons for disagreeing to Lords amendments Nos. 6, 7, 31 and 32 reported, and agreed to; to be communicated to the Lords.

PETITIONS
	  
	Falun Gong

John Robertson: I want to present a petition on behalf of more than 15,000 people throughout the United Kingdom who wish to protest against the appalling persecution of Falun Gong practitioners by the Chinese authorities.
	The petition states:
	The Petitioners further declare serious concerns about allegations of unlawful detention and torture, which have led to countless injuries and over seven hundred documented deaths.
	In addition, the Petitioners declare their respect for the peaceful and traditional message of Falun Gong, and its principles of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to work with its international partners to bring the perpetrators of this persecution, including Jiang Zemin, to justice for the crimes that they have committed.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	To lie upon the Table.

Health Services (South Buckinghamshire)

Paul Goodman: I wish to present a petition on behalf of more than 40,000 people in South Buckinghamshire against cuts and closures in our local health services.
	The petition states:
	To the House of Commons
	The petition of the residents of High Wycombe, Marlow and surrounding areas,
	Declares that the undersigned support the current maternity special care baby unit, children's unit and other services provided at Wycombe General Hospital.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons strongly urge the Secretary of State for Health to do all in his power to retain these services.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	To lie upon the Table.

RADIO SERVICES (VISUALLY IMPAIRED PEOPLE)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.[Mr. Fitzpatrick.]

Rosemary McKenna: I am extremely grateful that I have secured this debate on Government support for radio services for people who are visually impaired. I want to express my thanks to Royal National Institute of the Blind Scotland for its assistance in preparing for this evening's debate.
	Over the past 10 years, and particularly since 1997, we have moved forward considerably in raising awareness of the problems encountered by people with disabilities of all kinds. In my time in local government in Scotland, I chaired many committees that addressed issues of equality of opportunity. I therefore know that much has been done.
	Members will be aware of substantial measures taken during this Parliament aimed at improving the quality of life of people who are blind or partially sighted. Those include new legislation on copyright, guide dogs in taxis and special educational needs, together with the extension of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, the creation of national eye care pathways and so on.
	An estimated 2 million people in the UK have uncorrectable sight lossabout 3,000 people per constituency. Ninety per cent. of those are aged 60 or over. However, a stark picture of the typical blind and partially sighted person in the UK emerges from a series of recent RNIB research reports. The average profile is of a woman in her 70s who lives alone on the margins of poverty, with no contact with social work services, who has not left her house in the previous week even to go into the garden.
	Therefore, while the Government have done a lot to address the exclusion of people with disabilities and visually impaired people in particular, too many of our constituents with serious sight problems remain excluded and isolated. I cannot imagine what it would be like to lose my sight, especially if I lived alone. How would I read my mail or the newspaper? Although many young people gain access to news through various media, it is the elderly who still value the daily and weekly newspapers. They are a lifeline for many.
	Of course, there are many excellent services that help blind and partially sighted people to remain as independent and safe as possible. Much of that support is provided by carers, social work services and the voluntary sector. I want to focus on one inspiring service, VIP On Air. It is the first radio station in Europe that specifically serves a blind and partially sighted audience in Glasgow and west central Scotland. Not only is the principal audience visually impaired, but so are the presenters and producers.

John Robertson: I, too, have been fortunate enough to visit VIP On Air. Does my hon. Friend agree not just that it does an excellent job, needs to do more and needs help to broaden its service to the rest of the country, but that Glasgow city council in particular has done an excellent job in subsidising it and finding premises for it?

Rosemary McKenna: My hon. Friend is right. Along with RNIB Scotland, the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, Visibility and Playback, Glasgow city council played a major role. It formed a consortium to operate and develop VIP On Air. A listeners' forum has also been formed, which regularly gives the station team feedback via an e-mail group. Both the listeners' group and the visually impaired volunteers have representatives on the project board.
	Throughout its brief history to date, VIP On Air has greatly benefited from the support and assistance of BBC Scotland. It helped to recruit the station manager in April 2003 and has provided line management support since then. BBC Scotland has provided support and guidance on studio refurbishment, and recorded and broadcast a national radio programme to help publicise the station. It also seconded a programmer for two months to assist in the launch of the station. BBC Scotland's training programme is a crucial part of all that and one of the blind volunteers has secured an appointment as a researcher with BBC Scotland.
	Not only is VIP On Air a source of high-quality specialist programmes such as those featuring unabridged talking books, it is a tremendous way of sharing information with blind and partially sighted people that is typically available only in print. Programme content includes detailed read-throughs of daily newspapers, reports on service information from central and local government, changes in transport timetables and what's on and when at the local cinema or theatrenot to mention lively phone-ins and interviews with local and national politicians, celebrities and so on.
	Besides making great programmes that tackle social isolation, VIP On Air has helped to develop the confidence, skills and experience of those involved in the station. Many started as volunteers, but have progressed to become employees of VIP On Air or mainstream broadcasting organisations such as the BBC. There is a problem, however, and I ask the Minister to address it. The station currently broadcasts on the internet, at www.viponair.com, although most of its potential audience does not have easy access to the internet. How many elderly people do we know who can listen to the radio at home via the internet? Not many. I know that we now have many more silver surfers in this country, but thousands are denied access to this excellent service.
	VIP On Air is looking for a chance to reach the 3,000 mainly elderly people in each of our constituencies. It needs a broadcasting platform that its large potential audience can easily access. It has already set up a digital studio in Glasgow, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Anniesland (John Robertson) said, with the assistance of Glasgow city council, and it has the staff, volunteers and financial backing. I cannot stress enough the thanks that are due to RNIB Scotland, Glasgow city council and North Lanarkshire and South Lanarkshire councils. To its great credit and in the spirit of a true public service broadcaster, the BBC sits on the VIP On Air board and provides the station with training, marketing and other backing. The programming is good and there is capacity for expansion and further diversification to address a UK audience.
	However, VIP On Air cannot develop further while it is restricted to the internet. It tells me that its efforts to reach a wider audience have been frustrated by certain Ofcom regulations. Given the lack of available AM or FM band width, Ofcom has advised VIP On Air that the only realistic broadcasting option open to it is to apply for a geographically restricted community radio licence. It has indeed applied for such a licence for the Glasgow area. If granted, it will be of great assistance to blind and partially sighted people in Glasgow, but what about the rest of the UK? What about my constituents and those of every other Member?
	The station even investigated whether it could apply for more than one community radio licence and broadcast from its Glasgow studio to a number of areas in the UK. Of course, that would not provide universal coverage, but it would certainly increase reach. However, it was told that it could not. Under current regulations, the nearest that we could get to that is if a large number of radio stations similar to VIP On Air were created, with their own studios, and so on. What a waste of time and resources, given that the infrastructure is there, even if the bandwidth is not.
	These limitations seem unnecessarily restrictive. VIP On Air is a unique and ground-breaking radio station; indeed, it is the first such station in Europe. How much longer do blind and partially sighted people in the UK have to wait to get a chance to listen? Our visually impaired constituents constitute an often isolated and excluded community of interest spread across the UK. Surely the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Ofcom can offer more to VIP On Air than the possibility of a community radio licence in Glasgow alone.
	I have learned this week that Pure Digital has developed the first voice-enabled digital radio set in the UK. That tremendous development will be much welcomed, but that set can access only existing radio stations that have bandwidth. VIP On Air cannot be accessed as it is available only via the internet. The problem is that VIP On Air is being frustrated in its effort to secure the bandwidth necessary to broadcast to its isolated audience across the UK. I am sure that every Member of Parliament wants their visually impaired constituents to be able to receive this service. I urge the Minister to investigate urgently and to discuss with Ofcom the broadcasting barriers facing VIP On Air, which serves a community of interest rather than a geographical community.
	Additionally, I call on digital providers to carry VIP On Air as part of the large number of radio stations that broadcast via digital television. I can listen to BBC Radio Scotland in my London flat because I have digital television via cable. That would help some of our constituents, but I am certain that most of our elderly visually impaired constituents do not have access to digital television.
	VIP On Air is a charitable organisationthe first and only in Europeoperated on a non-profit-making model and radio could provide the bandwidth to enable it to work throughout the UK. The Government have done much to assist our poorest pensioners, but there are still many who are private people, unaware of how to obtain the help to which they are entitled, or who simply want their lives enriched. VIP On Air can help them achieve that.
	I began by describing the typical profile of a visually impaired person in the UKa woman in her 70s, living alone on the margins of poverty with no contact with social work services, who has not left her home in the last week, not even to go into the garden. Surely we can allow her to listen to a radio station that tackles such exclusion.

Richard Caborn: First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Rosemary McKenna) on securing the debate and on presenting to the House her case for the visually impaired. She has spoken with a great deal of feeling and passion. I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss such an important issue.
	Radio is and will remain a vital medium for the blind and partially sighted community. I am particularly pleased to hear of the continued success of radio services specifically designed for the blind and partially sighted. As my hon. Friend powerfully explained tonight, they provide an important contribution to the lives of the people that they serve.
	VIP On Air is one such service. It is a web-based radio located in Glasgow, but available to everyone with an internet-linked computer. It is, as I understand it, Europe's first radio station for the blind and partially sighted, and I hope that it will not be the last. Programmes such as Between the Sheets and Telly Guide give listeners access to the daily newspapers and TV listings, which are current and easily accessible. Between the Sheets, for example, features straight read newspaper articles, which gives blind and partially sighted people direct access to the newspaper media. That can provide accessibility to a range of information that many of us take for granted.
	I congratulate VIP On Air on reaching its first birthday in November last year and on the way in which it recruits its staff. I also thank Glasgow council for the support that it has given to the station and for the service that it provides to the Glasgow population. VIP On Air has not only contributed to its listeners' lives through radio, but has provided training, education and employment opportunities for the blind and partially sighted community. Those achievements have all been accomplished as an internet radio service. It is a rapidly growing platform, but it suffers the drawback of being less portable than traditional radios.
	I fully understand the desire of VIP On Air to look to the future and to seek ways in which it can communicate more effectively and easily with its audiencean audience with the potential to exceed, I am led to believe, 2 million listeners. I am also aware that VIP On Air would, above all, like to be able to provide a national service for its listeners.
	The problem is spectrum availability: analogue spectrum for radio is very limited, particularly at a national level. There are only eight national radio services in the UKfive held by the BBC and the remaining three by the commercial sector. There is simply not enough spectrum for another national service.
	So what are the alternatives? There is no reason in principle why VIP On Air should not hold a local licence, but there are a number of features that inevitably make that difficult. As with national services, spectrum at a local level is limited. In awarding licences, Ofcom must have regard for its statutory duties. For example, it must consider the extent to which a proposed service caters for the tastes and interests of people in the area.
	Ofcom also has to consider the ability of the service to be maintained throughout the licence period. It is not clear that a station aimed at blind and visually impaired listeners would easily satisfy those criteria, but that is a matter for Ofcom. It is always possible to buy a station from an existing licence holder, although format constraints may apply. Primarily, however, those are commercial matters between the parties concerned.
	In July 2004, the community radio order came into force, creating a third tier of radio in the UK. Those are generally very local, not-for-profit stations. They are required to show that they are for the good of members of the public or of particular communities, and that they will deliver social gain.
	It is relevant to this discussion that the community radio order defines community not in just geographical terms, but as communities of shared interests or characteristics. The aims of VIP On Air appear to be consistent with the thinking behind those aims. Indeed, it has submitted an application for a community radio licence for the Glasgow region, which Ofcom is considering. I hope that the House will appreciate that it would not be appropriate for me to comment on that, as it is clearly a matter for Ofcom, but I want to address the concerns that VIP On Air and my hon. Friend have raised about the further growth of community radio.
	The community radio order sets clear restrictions on ownership of licences. It prevents one person, or anyone connected to another station, from holding more than one licence. That could be something of an impediment as, under those terms, VIP On Air would be permitted to hold only a single licence for a specific area.
	The restrictions were put in place after wide consultation with the radio industry. They were generally welcomed, as they were recognised as a way of protecting the localness of the services, and of ensuring that they have roots in the communities that they serve. There are, of course, no restrictions on other organisations holding licences to provide services for blind and partially sighted people, but they would have to be separate from one another. There is also nothing to prevent VIP On Air from providing programmes for other community radio stations.
	My hon. Friend asked whether that could be reviewed, and Ofcom has been asked to conduct a review of the community radio sector two years after the first community station is licensed. If that review concludes that the restrictions are unnecessary or too burdensome, a further order for Parliament's approval could be brought forward that would remove or modify them. The review may provide an opportunity for my hon. Friend and VIP On Air to make representations.
	As my hon. Friend said, digital radio has developed consistently over the past two years and many see it as the real future of radio in the UK. By the end of 2004, more than 1.27 million sets had been sold in the UK and that figure is set to rise. It is calculated that by 2008 about 30 per cent. of households will have digital radios.
	Digital radio is broadcast using multiplexes, which bundle together a number of services. Typically, there are between seven and 10 services on a single frequency. That allows a more effective use of spectrum, and it has already made possible an increase in the number of services available. There are currently 18 national services available on digital: 10 are offered by the BBC and eight are run by the commercial sector. In total, digital radio offers more than 210 stations at both national and regional level. It is still a growing technology, and may represent too great an expense for VIP On Air. However, if the digital market continues to grow, it could represent a more credible model than its analogue alternatives.
	The technological developments are not just offering new opportunities for broadcasters. DAB digital radio has brought with it a new breed of radios. One such radio set, launched just last month by Pure Digital, offers a unique voice feedback technology, which vocalises the station selected, the time and any alarm settings. In other words, each time the user turns the dial, the radio will tell them the station they have selected. Those are potentially useful features to a blind or partially sighted listener. My hon. Friend said that she has seen that new product, and I would welcome any comments she may have.
	Digital radios are still more expensive than analogue radios, with the aforementioned set costing around 120. The cost of digital receivers is nevertheless falling, with sets now available for less than 50.
	I again congratulate my hon. Friend on raising this important issue this evening, and VIP On Air on its success over the past year. I hope that that continues for many years to come.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Adjourned accordingly at one minute past Nine o'clock.